Patricia Heidt, PhD

‘The greater Form that thou hast seen is only for the rare highest souls. The gods themselves ever desire to look upon it. Nor can I be seen as thou hast seen Me by Veda, or austerities or gifts or sacrifices; it can be seen, known, entered into only by that bhakti which regards, adores andloves Me alone in all things.’Bhagavad Gita (XI, 52-54)

Thus spoke the Lord to the overwhelmed and trembling Arjuna, as he finally withdrew the supreme Vision of Himself. That Vision is indeed the one that must be sought if at all the secrets of birth and death and eventual rebirth are to become unveiled. Yet the Lord tells us in these verses that this seeing is only for ‘the rare highest souls’: the Mystery here revealed to Arjuna is the supreme Mystery for the human race.

From time immemorial the human spirit has been caught in the labyrinth of this universal enigma, but has never been allowed full entry into its central sanctum sanctorum. The Bhagavad Gita, one of India’s most profound scriptures, tells us that this is the highest truth, this is the truest perception that the seeker can aspire to in his or her lifetime, this is the Vision of visions. Though it is reserved only for the most intrepid, the Gita affirms for all times that it is Mahakala who holds the grandest truths. The Time-Spirit is the apex in the formidable pyramid constituted of the seemingly unending experiences that throughout the ages seekers have had of God.

Much has been written on the Bhagavad Gita, on its splendid philosophical content and moral injunctions, as well as those of its aspects which appear to be historic. But perhaps the seal put on its capital Vision as being unrealisable for most human beings, has indeed served to clothe the mystery of Time in ever denser veils. Throughout the ages seekers have thus fled from this vision and pursued a quest that, for all practical purposes, has led in the opposite direction. Over the past several millennia, spirituality has followed a path of otherworldliness, precisely because the seeing of Time presented apparently unsurmountable barriers. Though in India the most profound descriptions of the cosmos and the time mechanism have been preserved and handed down through the ages, ultimately the path enjoined upon the seeker has led beyond the cosmos. This reached a crucial juncture when finally the schools of Illusionism in all their shades arose and seemed to definitively capture the spirit of the nation. Thus, as for Arjuna, the vision of that highest Truth proved too demanding, too overwhelming, too devastating for the fragile human consciousness to contain. For to know Time is to know Death. If we are to see Kala, concurrently we must face Yama. The two are one and the same.

It is this factor that has kept seekers engaged elsewhere, yet they have nonetheless been caught by the paradoxes and perplexities of this perennial Mystery. For all paths seek liberation from life and death. Thus while fleeing from the embrace of Mahakala, the human spirit has nonetheless been engaged from time immemorial in discovering some sort of liberation from the awesome supremacy of this Great God, this Mahadev.

It is because of this failure, this inability of the fragile human spirit to sustain the vision and pursue the quest to its ultimate reaches that the mystery of life and death and consequently rebirth has remained impenetrable.

The crux of the matter lies in a penetrating and revealing perception of Time. No discussion of rebirth, in any of its aspects can be truly meaningful unless the question of time Is dealt with. Yet this is the most elusive aspect of universal existence, and in itself has occupied the investigative mind of not only spirituality but of science as well. All things born in time must die, we are conditioned to believe. Hence countless sages and saints and thinkers have encouraged seekers to accept a reality beyond Time as the ultimate liberation; for Time, in their experience, is the devourer and the destroyer and none can escape that noose of Yama. Yet the Lord revealed to Arjuna his highest form as precisely the Time-Spirit. Even the Puranas state that Time stands ‘above all the Gods.’ How then are we to reconcile this supreme Truth – for none lay in doubt the authority of the Scripture with the fact that sages and seers have encouraged seekers to pursue avenues which lead out of the cosmic manifestation, as if this creation were a hell from which, sooner or later, we must escape?

Time, however, that formidable Mahadev, is part and parcel of the cosmic reality in which we, as embodied consciousnesses, abide. Therefore the Gita tells us that this is the highest Knowledge, since as creatures born into this cosmic dimension, we have no other choice but to accept our condition of birth in the material creation and discover the true purpose of our embodiment. Indeed, the kernel of the pursuit lies precisely in the discovery of the purpose of birth in the cosmos, on Earth. The present tremendous unrest of humanity derives especially from the fact that the race has lost sight of its essential reason for being. It would seem that, like the vision of Mahakala which so tormented Arjuna, as a race we are being irretrievably thrust into those ‘mouths terrible with many tusks of destruction . . . faces like fires of Death and Time . . .‘ (XI, 25):

Destruction, doom and death are the powers that bar our entry into the heart of our quest, where the secret purpose of creation is held-into that cave where Guha, the veiled One, is concealed. This Son-God is the Child ‘hidden in the earth and the waters’ of our material creation, at the heart, the cave, of each embodied thing and being.

Mahakala is not only destruction, for the supreme Truth is a triune manifestation and every end initiates a new beginning. But for the process of destruction to be just one phase of an eternal mechanism, something must necessarily survive the devastation, something must remain ever unmoved, untouched, uncontaminated by the sting of death. The loss of the definitive knowledge of just what that imperishable core is, can safely be held as the reason for the enactment of the collective death-wish that presently plagues our society. Yes, the ancient truths live on, and their validity remains sublime in the eyes of all clear thinking beings. But these truths seem now to have lost their power to arrest or in some way to bring about a creative process in this devastating act of destruction which looms before us.

The problem is Time and Death. The failure is an inability to sustain the supreme Vision and penetrate into its deepest recesses so that we may come upon that Core and discover therein Guha, the Son-God, the child who holds that secret Purpose, who is himself Agni, the Immortal among mortals, the Immobile amidst the mobile.

How can we reach this magical Cave if we are ever fleeing from the vision and positing the apex of our quest in a Beyond, in an extra-cosmic dimension? This signifies a fleeing from Time, just as Arjuna was forced to do because of the delicacy of his temperament. However, today’s warrior – if he or she is to unravel the highest of enigmas and discover the deepest mysteries, which alone can give us that unique Sense once again-must face Time, must face Death, and thereby come upon the element in our being which survives destruction. Nay, which uses destruction as well as creation as the modes of its expression, as the vehicles upon which it moves in the world, immobile yet fully engaged in the mobility of this universe in an eternally renewing process.

This path lies in the opposite direction to the one seekers have been encouraged to pursue since the time of the Buddha. It lies in the core of creation, not in the Beyond, or whatever the name we give to this extra-cosmic reality.

A core must not only survive the action of disintegration; it must be the central pivot of the process, and even, we may add, its controlling element. It is that ‘centre that holds’, in contrast to Yeats’ vision of an apocalyptic disintegration due precisely to the fact ‘the centre cannot hold’, as he describes in his majestic verse. What then is this core? How does it arise, and moreover, how can it be experienced ?

These are the questions we shall endeavour to answer in this study. But first it is necessary to know the exact nature of the Reality we wish to explore, in the effort to clarify these fundamental questions. For the problem before us concerns our entire perception of the Absolute and our approach to that highest Reality. Indeed, a study of the development of spirituality and the course it has taken over the millennia is a precious aid in the knowledge we are seeking.

Undoubtedly all spiritual paths have led seekers to a Beyond, to a Transcendent Reality. Even religions have fostered the same emphasis. Some call it Heaven, others Nirvana. Whatever designation, it is evident that we are dealing with one avenue of experience; or, we may say, with one ultimate goal. This is by no means a false perception. It is deeply true, and for this very reason innumerable yogins and tapaswins have devised means to carry the aspirant to this static Beyond. Once one attains the capacity to place the consciousness out of the cosmic dimension, it is believed that one can enter into a transcendence which is an upholding or all-encompassing Consciousness that somehow, in some magical way, is not involved in the flux and flow of material creation and hence is untouched by the ravages of time and decay and death which appear to be the principal features of our universe. Methods of escape to this transcendent Brahman were thus devised in order to grant the troubled human spirit the solace of a peace that by virtue of its static quality could liberate the seeker from any further involvement in the torment of life and death. Rebirth, in this instance, was accepted only as a means to achieve this liberation ultimately. Unlike the mid-eastern religions that have arisen in this 9th Manifestation (beginning in 234 BC and lasting for 6,480 years thereafter), the pursuit of such an attainment was not limited to just one lifetime. Nonetheless, the goal was the same: a path out of the cosmos, hopefully never more to return.

The realisation such illumined beings attained cannot be denied or doubted. These yogins themselves stand as luminous beacons to the truth of the way and the goal. However, the time has come to view dispassionately such accomplishments in the light of our present discussion, insofar as the acquisition of a transcendent poise naturally suggests ultimate liberation from future birth. We are drawn to believe that the process of birth, death and rebirth, holds only as long as the human being is caught in the coils of the Ignorance. When finally he or she does attain liberation, concurrently with this accomplishment the realiser is freed from any further involvement with material creation and this ecstatic yet more often maddening Dance of Shiva.

However, the power of Arjuna’s vision still lingers in the consciousness of all who seriously pursue the path of Truth. That vision, if indeed it is the highest, presents a stark contrast to the static Beyond. And are we then not justified in questioning the content and direction of these ways which have not carried seekers to the truth of Mahakala but rather away from it? The conventional paths would have us believe that it is precisely a realisation or occupation with Time that is the inferior poise, and that the transcendent reality is the higher. But the Gita contradicts this notion, and it has held its place at the heart of Indian wisdom far longer and more persistently than any other scripture. It has thoroughly pervaded all Indian spirituality and captured the imagination of seekers for several millennia. But perhaps it is time itself that can give us the answers we seek.

Time is the great Controller. Thus if spirituality has moved in a direction opposite to Time’s mystery and truth, it must be Mahakala himself who is ‘responsible’ for the divergence We shall see anon how indeed this has been the case, when we bring into our discussion the line of the Ten Avatars of Hinduism. But for the present, it is important to discover the true nature of Reality, in its most limpid form. That is, we must ‘unmask’ the Transcendent itself, unveil it as we would unveil Guha, free it of the many elements which have diluted its pristine truth. At the same time certain fundamental aspects of that ultimate Beyond must be grasped, for only in this way can we appreciate without any illusions – our real condition in life and the material dimension.

The first aspect of the Transcendent that arises in our purview is its unmoving nature. That is, if indeed it is extra cosmic and represents something, some dimension, some plane of consciousness which from our poise within the cosmos we must view as ‘beyond’, then, given the fact that the principal feature of the cosmos is movement, it stands that in the Transcendent this element is withheld. We know therefore that one of the prime attributes of the extra-cosmic Absolute is that it is unmoving and immobile. This represents the great divide between Cosmos and the Transcendent Brahman. It is this immobility that has provided yogins with the exquisite experience of Peace. Extending the consciousness to the ultimate reaches of itself, all relatives in the universe dissolve into this great and immense static Calm.

If indeed the Transcendent is significant of that which lies beyond movement and the snare of the Gunas – creation, preservation and destruction – it is recognisable that this Ultimate Beyond does not suffer the fate of decay. For in such a condition, what can there be that is subject to decay? The process that engenders decay and death is irrevocably related to movement. The Transcendent being unmoving, It is understood that the next quality we discover is its imperishabiliy. The Transcendent does not perish because it is, in fact, unborn, – unborn in our moving and evolving universe. There is nothing of it that can be born and hence no experience of decay and death, much less of any rebirth.

Without a doubt the experience of that irrefutable imperishability is the single most enticing factor that has instigated the pursuit of realms beyond. At the same time, it is that devastating perception of disintegration that has established the vision of Mahakala as a prize for only those ‘rare highest souls’.

However, we approach now a third characteristic which has cast an element of paradoxical doubting into our quest and experience. It is this: If the Transcendent is unmoving and imperishable due to its other-worldliness, or its poise beyond and outside of the cosmos, then we encounter a particular aspect of its nature which has been the bed-rock of Indian spirituality from time immemorial. This is its indivisibility. Given the fact that it is a homogeneous Consciousness beyond the planes of existence in which division occurs, it stands that this Transcendent is hence indivisible. Consequent to this, we know that this perception offers the most compelling aspect of the Absolute: its unity, its oneness. Yet with this appreciation many of the paradoxes which face the human spirit arise; and due to this unity, oneness and indivisibility, it can be shown how until now no path has truly bridged the chasm that this experience of transcendent indivisibility and unity has created in our spiritual experience. And it is precisely because of this chasm that the highest Vision has been withheld from the seeker. For to bridge this intriguing chasm is to resolve the paradoxes.

The main aspect of the paradox is this: If the Transcendent or Static Brahman is indeed indivisible, then it stands that none of the experiences seekers have until now had of Its poise beyond and out of the moving cosmic dimension have been faithful to the truest and highest Truth. They have been real and overwhelming experiences, but they have suffered from a severe limitation. This limitation resides exclusively in the fact that any experience of the Transcendent which does not include the totally of Itself must be, to a certain extent, deceiving. For we cannot divide the indivisible. If the Transcendent is all-encompassing – and this is one of its most secure attributes – within Itself lies that which we consider irredeemably subject to division. The unity of the Transcendent carries us to the clear perception that the only true experience of Reality is an integral one. How then to achieve this perception of wholeness? and what would be its relation to the question of rebirth, the theme of our analysis?

It must be stated that this discovery is the key that unlocks those iron doors which do not permit entry into Mahakala’s sanctum sanctorum, and hence withhold from us the true meaning of life and death and our purpose in this material creation.

We cannot divide that which is lndivisible. This means then that there can be no true experience of those attributes that have been here enumerated of the Absolute which introduce the element of division.

Thus the Transcendent’s stasis can never be disconnected from its kinesis, a kinesis which in any case arises in its own Being. Likewise, its imperishability must contain within it the elements of all that is created, preserved and destroyed. But how is this accomplished?

The chasm is cleared of darkness and the bridge constructed in our awareness when we understand that the vast Transcendent in the act of manifestation is reduced to a seed. This is the profoundest mystery of creation. It is the origin of all things. The Unmanifest enters the Manifest (of Itself by virtue of this compression to a Seed, – that precious bija, that miraculous Hiranyaretas which is Agni. This Flame-Child stands at the Origin, he who is the first God extolled in the Veda. Thus all the attributes that we can conceive of in the Transcendent Beyond are drawn, by its own power of manifestation, into the Seed of Itself. That is, immobility, indivisibility, imperishability, are all properties which are contained in this miraculous Golden Bija.

What happens then to this Seed, which stands as the foundation of material creation?

The Golden Bija is the origin of spatial reality and the base of material creation. Manifestation (of the Unmanifest) results then in a central truth-seed, which from that Point extends itself, multiplies, grows, in the experience of creation, preservation and dissolution. This can be appreciated if we observe the nature of the cosmos we inhabit, which confirms this perception in that all its material bodies orbit a Centre. Indeed, centrality is one of the foremost aspects of the universal dimension. Yet there is a consciousness, a reality that extends beyond the material creation, or rather within which creation in matter is contained. But in appreciating this fact, a curious phenomenon took possession of the human mind. Somehow, along the way of human evolution the experience of God resulted in the fact that the Transcendent (the very significance of the word stands as a clue: that which lies beyond … ), which contains this universe in its Being and is all-encompassing, became veiled or masked to the perceptive eye of consciousness in the human being; and these contained dimensions came to be considered or seen as somehow inferior, or reflected an inferior spiritual poise and realisation, or a partial reality. This then reached its extremes in the formulation of the theories of Illusionism in all its many facets, and ultimately laid emphasis on an escape from these apparently inferior cages in which the human consciousness was seen to be imprisoned.

A divisive perception of this nature is not a property of the Divine Consciousness. It reflects a wholly human, mental poise and suffers from the scourge of a separative vision and experience, results of the mental orientation of the species. Because of this limitation of the present instrument, the Lord withdrew the vision of Himself as the Time-Spirit from Arjuna, since in this state it is not possible for humanity to attain a fuller and truer unified vision due to these limitations of the instrument and its subjugation to the rule of Mind.

The human species is an evolving collective entity. At present, civilisation as a whole is experiencing the pain of realising its limitations and insufficiencies and of knowing that as a race its actual constitution cannot permit a higher experience to come. To reach a wider and deeper collective experience, a new, more refined, more enhanced instrument is demanded. The turmoil of humanity at present is due largely to the fact that pressure is being applied on all quarters of Earth existence to compel the emergence of higher faculties so that a new way can manifest. Some details of this evolutionary process are given in Indian Scriptures. For example, in the Puranas we find mention of ‘the Nine Creations’. The final stages, the 7th, 8th and 9th, refer to the mental, the overmental and the supramental creations, respectively. Mental man is not the ultimate and highest but is merely a transitional creature. The evolutionary process, governed by the play of the tattwas and the gunas, is the mechanism to evolve a higher species. And one of the principal characteristics of this newly-emerging creation, superior to the present mental being, is a capacity to experience the indivisibility of God, – a consciousness, hence, of true unity. For this the being of the human experiencer must be fortified in such a way that it can withstand the impact of seeing the Time-Spirit working in the worlds, via the action of creation, preservation and destruction or dissolution, with an equanimity of being that arises from the knowledge of the Core-Purpose at the heart of material creation.

The Golden Seed contains this central truth. Our direct link with the Transcendent lies in this Seed, in the heart of ourselves and in the heart of our material universe. Thus to know that Purpose – the only real road to survival and salvation for the human species – one must plunge into the heart of matter and not away from it and into the Beyond. Since Time is inextricably linked with matter and material reality and cannot be seperated from the spatial, cosmic dimension, it becomes evident that to discover this truth and to embark upon this entirely new direction in our quest, we must realise God as presented to Arjuna in the supreme Vision he was granted of the Time-Spirit.

The Bhagavad Gita was the truth, the highest truth of the past Manifestation, the 8th. In this 9th Manifestation another way emerges, the way of Mahakala, carrying humanity to the threshold of the 9th and highest of the Puranic stages of creation. Central to this process, upholding it, controlling it, securing its inevitable, victorious fulfilment is that Golden Bija, – Hiranyaretas. Our experience of God must thus be in this Immanence; and the Seed contains the totality of that which is extra-cosmic. It is the Transcendent born in the manifest universe, it is the Eternal born in time, and there is no difference between the two. Rather we may say, this manifestation in matter presents an enhanced and more complete experience. The purpose of material creation is thus to express the fullest attributes of the Supreme Consciousness. Multiplicity is the truth of the cosmos, a splendid diversity whose reason for being is that all aspects of God can be given expression, that the Absolute can know Itself, can enjoy Itself. Self-knowledge and self-enjoyment are the propellants for deployment of the Absolute in material creation, in this great Dance of Shiva. The hierarchy that exists in the universe covers the entire range of such a self-knowing and self-enjoyment, resulting in the fact that at any given moment all possibilities of expression, of manifestation, exist simultaneously. For this is the nature of that Golden Seed: simultaneity and wholeness and compactness are its keywords. All is contained within the Seed.

And is there an end or a beginning to that Transcendent which stands beyond these distinctions? There can be no end to that which never had a beginning, which is ‘unborn’. Therefore, as all the other attributes of the Absolute are contained in the seed of Itself, so too is this supreme quality of ceaselessness and eternal manifestation.

Time’s function in the material universe is to draw the compact, involved elements held in the Seed to fruition. Time is thus the motor of Consciousness. It draws out and into extension that which arose at the Origin, at the moment of passage of the Unmanifest to the Manifest. This passage is the bridge connecting statics to dynamics. Time is movement, or rather it gives forth a body of itself in the cosmic principle of perpetual motion, or dynamic consciousness. Hence we encounter the splendid, colossal image in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of the universe in the form of a Horse, – that great and majestic Vedic symbol of energy, speed, kinesis. ‘Time’, the Upanishad tells us, ‘is the self of the horse sacrificial’. In this superb image the Seer describes the deepest truth of cosmic existence: that Time is the propeller and stands in the inner recesses of material creation and urges, propels it onward to completion, to fulfilment of its inherent purpose . . .’the self of the horse sacrificial . . .’

In this brief initial survey, which we shall carry to fuller dimensions in the course of this discussion, the first foundation of a new seeing arises: it is that the Transcendent and its immanent Seed, standing at the heart of material creation, are one and indivisible. The new faculty that will permit this simultaneous perception, will finally endow the human being with the capacity for a truly integrated seeing and experiencing of unity and multiplicity. For can there be any real existence of Unity without Multiplicity? Unity in itself implies the existence of the Multiple. A species is now to manifest which has evolved a faculty beyond Mind, capable of simultaneous appreciation of a unified multiplicity, which is the truer and more integral experience of God. Mind has been the aid as well as the stumbling-block until now. Mind has introduced division and hence has fostered a linear expression and divisive experience of Reality, and given rise in our civilisation to the fullest perversions and aberrations that ensue from this divisive, separative poise. The time has come to bridge the chasm and to make whole what has seemed to be severed only in or due to our perception, but not in the truth of Itself.

Hiranyaretas is a name of Agni. This mighty and adorable Vedic God’s vahana is the white Steed. Again we encounter here the image of motion and the energy that arises from intense speed, as in the blasting process of particles in nuclear physics. This image recalls the Upanishadic vision of the universe in the form of the Horse. Dynamics is then its essence (‘the self of the horse . . .’), but this is hardly the whole truth. For a chaotic and disintegrating and dispersed motion is not our experience of the universe, either spiritually or scientifically. Rather, what we see is a controlled and orderly movement, a harmony of the spheres, as it has been called from time immemorial. But what is the element that allows for this controlled and orderly dynamism, the truth of not only the cosmos but of our very own bodies? Once again we must delve deeply into the heart of the matter, to the innermost truth. We see then that ever and always centrality is the key. No matter how wide or how deep we extend our vision – that is, into the farthest reaches of the cosmos, or minutely focussed in the smallest of atomic particles – we find the existence of a core. That nucleus holds the body together – a body which is precisely characterised by motion – and controls and contains this play of colossal velocity, and secures a harmony and not a chaotic dispersal of energy.

In the human being we encounter this same truth. Each body is held together in life, in the experience of creative evolving, by a Core. Therein lies the seed of the Transcendent. It stands at the centre of our beings; and , as in the mighty universe, in the gigantic galaxies, this central core controls our existence in any given body and holds the key to our individual destiny. This is the ‘unborn’, the ‘undying’ part of ourselves. In the Veda this truth is expressed in the name of one of Agni’s vahanas: Aja, the ‘unborn’. Yet this word may prove deceiving because, accustomed as the human being is to separating reality into inferior and superior, higher and lower levels, when we use this term we fall prey to a consciousness that seeks escape from birth and the mechanism of evolution that has plagued seekers until now. We seem encouraged by such titles to seek dissolution into that unborn and undying One, for it alone appears to represent the highest truth which has somehow ‘fallen’ into this material hell and out of which it must emerge, never more to return. In such a case, birth, with all its glories and its travails, would clearly be a Divine jest, a farce played upon the human creation – and worse, played upon the Absolute Itself! Indeed, the final lines of the Rig Vedic Hymn of Creation seem to suggest just that: ‘He who in the highest empyrean surveys it, He alone knows, or else, even He knows not!’

Einstein has said God does not play dice, thus expressing his reticence in accepting the probability foundation of quantum physics. We can carry this a step further and state that the Supreme Consciousness does not know chaotic chance and purposelessness. Coupled with its indivisibility, the result is that birth in the material universe must not be in order to escape from it to the Beyond – for then, what was the need to enter this dimension at all? – but rather so that a fuller experience or expression of the Absolute could manifest. Material creation is thus the Body of Brahman, the Divine Shakti, deploying Herself for the purpose of the Absolute’s self-knowing and self-enjoying.

We cannot divorce ourselves from this truth and cosmic function. We are integral parts of the cosmic manifestation, minute as we may be in comparison to the vastnesses of the universe. However, does this minuteness not reflect then the very process of passage from the Unmanifest to the Manifest which has been described herein? We are, as it were, those very Seeds. We are those infinitesimal ‘eyes that see’ through which the Absolute knows, and thus knowing enjoys Itself. And this is the magic and the mystery of human birth. We are endowed with all the properties of the Transcendent and are Its instruments for this supreme Act of creative deployment of Itself.

How then can we desire to flee from this instrumentation, this glorious act of knowing along with God, of self-discovery of all the attributes contained within Itself ? But at the same time we must accept the Laws which govern the orderly deployment and extension in Time of the compact particles in the Seed. These use that majestic and awesome dynamism, the Power or the Shakti in her movement of creation, preservation and dissolution. To participate knowingly and willingly in this Act, we must then accept these laws – the essence of Time – indeed we must accept the Divine Mother. Thus we must evolve as a race beyond the capacity of an Arjuna and reach the point where we can know and sustain all aspects of Mahakala, above all his consort, Mahakali, without flinching, without seeking escape to the Beyond because of the limitations and trepidant condition of the present human spirit.

However, the aid for this realisation is indicated in the Gita. In the same verse the Lord gives this aid-key to Arjuna: Bhakti – but which ‘regards, adores and loves Me alone in all things’. Is this not the path we are describing in these pages? We see that the cosmic manifestation is the truth of that immanence, which results in the perception that Mahadeva is in all things. There is nothing outside of God, and the key for the method to sustain this highest of visions is Love.

This then brings our attention to focus on an aspect of creation which has held in rapt captivity the entire human race from the time of its inception. Nay, it is the truth encountered together with Time at the Origin. This is Love, – the power of Love. Because of Love a supreme equilibrium is secured in the material creation, which results in the fact that dissolution intoThat is rendered impossible. This harmony, this rhythm secures that a certain distance is maintained, a certain distinction and differentiation, whereby there comes into being a Knower and the Known, an Enjoyer and the Enjoyed, – the Divine Musician and the Instrument upon which and through which it can express Itself and enjoy that sublime Expression. If it were not for Love all would dissolve and never experience the bliss of Union, and material creation would then indeed be purposeless. It is Love that stands as the handmaiden, as the high priestess in the innermost temple in whose secret chamber we find Agni, the Divine Child, that superlative Purpose incarnate, that divine Will manifesting in the worlds.

Love holds all things in perfect harmony and equilibrium so that the Eye of Awareness can experience Oneness, can enjoy the bliss of that Divine Unity in creation. It is this that stands as the highest truth of our existence and being. Hence the Lord reveals to Arjuna that only such a bhakti, seeing, adoring, loving ‘Me alone in all things’ can be granted the vision of Mahakala; for indeed, Love and Time are the Being and Becoming of material creation.

Thus Desire, Love, the Ancients tell us was the first attribute or circumstance to arise in the being of That, and this was the link between the Unmanifest and the Manifest, between the uncreated and the created. Without hesitation it can be stated that this Rig Vedic Hymn of Creation is the most stupendous legacy left to human civilisation in the form of sacred texts. Nowhere in the vast collection of utterances on the Supreme Reality, do we find verses comparable to this one remarkable Hymn in that none can equal the truth-seeing of those illumined Vedic Seers. The most complete vision of creation, in its real and living truth, is expressed in this Hymn. To it we can turn for confirmation of our discoveries; and indeed it can be seen that if the path is followed into creation rather than away and out of it, perforce the result is the same as that of the Rig Vedic vision. No other scripture in the world has expressed so faithfully the cosmic truth as these collections of Songs in praise of the Divinity, – indeed, the most ancient record of truth-seeing the world possesses.

At first there was the Pulse of the One, alone. Then arose love, Desire, for that drew the Pulse into extension, into manifestation. Everafter it journeys to the discovery of Self, to the expression in the womb of material creation of the harmonies of that Pulse of the One. Love drives the One onward, outward in its quest for completion, for fulfilment, for apotheosis of the inherent truth of Itself. Thus Love is the essential power of this material universe, and these same longings are planted in the breasts of all living creatures, propelling them onward ever in search of that pulsating One in the Core in the primordial Hiranyagarbha. For out of this Golden Womb, or rather contained within it, are the Golden Seeds. Womb and Seed are thus the secretmost truths of material creation and hence the deepest truths of human existence itself. The propagation of the species is ever a reproduction on dense levels in that great and dark original Plasma, of this primordial act of Creation.

How could the ancient Seers know this Act so thoroughly? Did they look out, beyond, into the Absolute Transcendent? Nay, such a seeing, as experienced by these ancient Rishis, came through the depths of the soul. Therein womb and seed are lodged. This is the Cave, and in it are concealed all the secrets of creation, of the truth of our world, our lives, our destiny, our rebirths.

Desire drew out that which lay compact, contracted into ‘That One . . . there was nothing else nor ought beyond it’ . . . And with desire, out of the depths of Love, came ‘will in the heart’, and this then ‘extended horizontally’ that Ray. Thereafter the seed of Brahman was cast far and wide in the process of self-manifestation, from self-law. And thus the Pulse gave birth to the worlds and all creatures therein in an eternal process of creation, preservation and dissolution.

But at the heart of It all stands a Core, in the immense Core of the One Itself. Thus as embodied beings our profoundest truth is this central cave in which That One resides, at the innermost heart of ourselves. It can be visualised as a formidable tornado in whose centre stands an eye. The colossal play in the periphery is united and one with the centre. Indeed it cannot exist divorced from this essential unity. It is the same for each human incarnation. What is it that is born? The Vedic Hymn of Creation tells us exactly what this is, how birth comes about. The process of the greater manifestation is the same for the smaller, just as the infinitesimal atom reproduces in the minute boundaries of itself the same phenomenon and conglomeration of matter that we can perceive in the gigantic universe. Millions upon millions of ‘galaxies’ we carry in our human bodies. Each has a centre with its core or nucleus, and these ‘galaxies’ are held together by a ‘galactic centre’ in the human body, which is the soul.

Like the centre of our galaxy or the centre of our solar system, a luminous ‘sun’ abides in our hearts. That ‘seed’ is the centre in its inner circumference, – a magnetic core which by the special properties inherent in its central Pulse, is able to hold in orbit all the galaxy-cells of our bodies. In the course of our lives a ‘ray’ is extended horizontally from this vertically compressed seed, as the Rig Veda describes, from this point outward. And this extension is the lived (horizontal) experience of our individual Time, by which means we serve as conscious instruments in creation for the supreme act of self-knowing and self-enjoyment of the Absolute.

The core moves from one dimension to another. It is our bridge to the other hemisphere, to what is for us, in our state of unawareness, the unknown. The gateway to that unknown is Death. Passage to that other side signifies a rupture of the horizontal extension of our individual time. However, this is simply the result of the limitation of the present human instrument, in which and for which this core is entirely veiled. Guha remains ever concealed for most if not all human beings. Yet, what does indeed happen at death in all individual existence? What does it mean to say that time ceases for a person who dies, which is an obvious fact and cannot be denied? It appears that with human birth we enter the realm of time. We thus begin our journey on this crushing wheel that characterises the universe in which we exist, only then at death to be mercilessly thrust out of its womb of relatedness and relativities into some void, from whence it seems we have come, to be finally disentangled from all the relations and experiences nurtured, cherished (or even despised) in the process of living in time on this planet, in this universe. What is the purpose of this painful severance that death afflicts upon almost all human creatures? Or else, in order to escape from this anguish that birth invariably sets in motion and the suffering engendered by a life in ignorance, one seeks the refuge of death in order that these knotted relations in this great web of our time-pattern cease to exist and bind us to this awesome yet horrific Wheel, our benediction and our bane. It seems the only salvation possible is therefore to use Death as a means to liberate ourselves from a continued existence in the material universe and on this particular planet. Death then appears to bring an end to all relatedness. Where time exists there is an unavoidable web, constituted of experiences lived in material creation, but held together by a core. There can be no such construction on the basis of relations in the universe, between its myriad parts, unless a core central to the process exists.

In our exploration we have seen that this core is the compact, contracted, unextended and compressed essence of the Absolute. All true centres carry this magnetic Pulse within their spaceless dimensions. Because of the existence of this central Point, the process of extension by and through time can ensue and material manifest being arises. Time is thus the principle energy of creation, the ‘self’ indeed of that mighty cosmic Horse. Yet for this play to ensue, the ‘centre must hold’. And it does hold. Every human birth, not to speak of the universe itself, stands as testimony to the existence of this One.

In our innermost core That One is lodged. This is Agni, the divine Fire. It is the incarnate Will. The ‘pulse’ that arises at the origin of Time is that Will. Thereafter it sends out its reverberations. These then produce ripples in the fabric of our individualised ‘systems’, which then become that web we inhabit, just as a spider from her own being, her centre, draws forth the substance which she uses to construct her web, the ‘cosmos’ she then inhabits. Essential to this process is Desire, or the Power of Love, which results in a harmony of all the parts by virtue of the fact that it secures the indispensable ‘distance’ in order that the process of separation can allow for an Enjoyer and the Enjoyed.

In that core there is no relatedness, for this requires extension. There is only Being, truth of being, Sat. Yet without the core no relations could come into existence, for they cannot arise without a binding centre, a hub as it were. Likewise, the attributes of the core could never ‘know’ themselves if divorced from the full process of manifestation. And holding this majestic Play together, in a magical balance of contraction and expansion, is that magnetic Point. Indeed this Seed is equal to the Absolute. One is the vast; the other is the minute and compact. Thus in our individual core we hold this golden Bija containing all the attributes of the Transcendent.

Imperishability is its nature. How then can this Seed-Core die if essential to its being is eternal ceaselessness? But indeed it does not perish. At death it is time that ceases (to our conscious experience). And this brings the pain of separation from all that during the conscious passage of time in our bodies we had come to cherish and to love. This pain of separation has been the scourge of human existence, this knowledge that all things born must die, that no matter how fulfilling and satisfying our lives, whatever is built up in this individual yet multiply-interrelated web must dissolve at death. There is no way in which we can carry anything with us into that beyond, that unknown realm. Hence a sense of purposelessness permeates the entire fabric of individual and collective existence. The human creature seeks desperately to overcome this apparent purposelessness of life through what appear to be creative acts, resulting in some carried-over element, be this a work of art, of literature, of science, or whatever; or else simply in the extension of his seed in the form of his offspring. But the pain remains. The unknowing continues to plague us all. And we seek compensation or extinction.

The answer sages have given is to establish a poise of consciousness that rests on the solid realisation of uninvolvement and detachment. Yet this, as mentioned, merely serves to confound the already impossible confusion death generates for the troubled human spirit. That is, such a realisation, as exhilarating as it may be, merely serves to put a Divine Seal on purposelessness. We are then entirely justified in viewing the world in which we live as void of any great or even minor sense. For all practical purposes it is a maya, an illusion, a web whose centre is a sombre void.

However, in that core there is no void but rather plenitude of Being, and therein lies the secret dharma which is our eternal truth of being. In it we find that great Purpose, individually and collectively, and we realise that birth is a supreme grace, for it grants us the opportunity of conscious enactment of that very Purpose. Nonetheless, we are faced with the experience of death. No matter how solid the equanimity of our consciousness, we must still deal with Yama and Kala when ‘our time is up’.

Death brings oblivion. In that Sleep of sleeps we are disengaged from all that we had experienced in life on this side. However, is this a permanent feature of life? Or is it simply the result of our present constitution? Together with this query goes another, and they cannot be separated: Is this creation thus essentially one of Ignorance? For this is our experience of it as human beings who live life bounded by the limited vision of separateness and disunity. Thus we have devised countless theories to fortify our ignorant experience and justify our behavior patterns which are tearing civilisation to shreds; or else these theories serve to justify our quest for a Beyond in isolation from and severed from this manifest world of relatedness.

The cloak of Ignorance that presently shrouds human consciousness is the sole purpose for the imperative need of oblivion at the time of death, in order that we continue our instrumentation, drawn back into life by desire of fulfilment, so that we may continue as individualised ‘eyes that see’.

When we take birth – and the process of birth extends beyond the boundaries we attribute to it in the 9-month gestation process starting with conception – we set in motion that magical process of the Eye of the Tornado gathering energy about itself. We collect, on the basis of this eye-core, the elements or sheaths or bodies which are necessary for the extension in matter of that One in the Core. We form our vahana, or vehicle. This element, which is an individualised seed-truth of the Absolute, is the particle that survives all death, disintegration and rebirth – but that uses the tattwas and the gunas for its mechanism of expression in the most material dimension. It collects energies, organises them, creates a cosmos of the chaos – so perfectly conveyed in the Vedic term, ritam. This is the Undying, the Unborn one Aja, the mighty vahana of Agni; for this symbol describes the ‘body’ of the essence that Agni is. He is the first of the Gods and the realiser of immortality; or rather, that Immortal among mortals. Agni is that One, that Pulse in the Core, that Hiranyaretas, or the Golden Seed. Indeed, the Immortal amongst the mortality of our decaying parts.

This Core is undying. It does not decay. It knows and enjoys ceaselessness, eternal Becoming, an action which by virtue of its Being is controlled and ordered and expressive of the highest Truth. This is our own inherent truth, our intrinsic Dharma, collectively and individually. In view of this luminous destiny, whence this pain and the affliction of an ignorant unknowing, which seeks to avoid birth and flee from the Cosmic Womb of the Mother, as one would flee from the darkest Hell?

Again it must be stated that knowledge of the reality of this material creation and hence our own participation therein as conscient beings can only come by a plunge into that Core and not away and into any Beyond. It is also this plunge ‘Into the Seed-Core that can give us any real and lasting satisfaction in the quest for true knowledge of rebirth, as well as of birth itself, and that ever enigmatic, terrifying, rapacious ‘hunger that is Death’.

© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, 1997

‘At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis
in which is concealed a choice of its destiny.’
˗ Sri Aurobindo

The malaise of our civilisation is not an inchoate or unpredictable development. Rather, it is the logical, foreseeable result of thousands of years of partial and ineffective spiritual visions and incomplete philosophical systems. These have always been the driving force behind the evolution of higher mental forms. Therefore, if our civilisation stands at a critical juncture at present, it is not in the secular and scientific domain that we must search for the cause of the decay. We must discover what has been lacking in the dimension of existence that moulds the more external and material patterns which condition life on this planet.

Once the root of the problem is located in its true area of causation, necessarily a change must be introduced in that sphere before the more external levels can be influenced. Thus if we can locate the root cause of the decay in that more essential domain, our task of bringing about a change in the individual and in society and of establishing a new world order on Earth is greatly facilitated.

Indeed, the crux of the problem lies here: for thousands of years sages, saints, yogis, philosophers, and men and women of wisdom have described the purpose of birth on this planet as simply a passage to a reality beyond not only our planetary home but entirely out of the cosmic dimension. The course our civilisation has taken can therefore be directly connected to this factor. The influence a vision of this nature has wielded has been devastating–for it has carried the planet and its multiple societies to the brink of total annihilation.

We may call this development a conspiracy of the spiritual elite which gradually influenced the whole tenure of life on Earth, spreading its tentacles of influence through religions and philosophical systems during the past several thousands of years, but now through scientific, political and socioeconomic systems. The latter can invariably trace their inspiration to some spiritual or philosophical source. For even our most material ideologies that apparently deny the higher realities of existence and focus entirely on the physical dimension, have done so by virtue of a reaction to those more metaphysical postulations.

Many profound thinkers throughout the world have perceived that it is only a spiritual renaissance that can save our civilisation. Only if we attain a different consciousness, rooted in some higher seeing, can there be any real change, they feel. This may well be true, but what is not appreciated is that the present chaos is a direct outcome of our past mystic and spiritual perceptions. There are two aspects to this development. One is the course spirituality took in the West, which founded itself on a certain form of negation of life; and the other is the Eastern orientation, in its own way equally a denial of life.

In the West, out of denial and suffering there developed a certain strength. Believers had been encouraged to accept suffering as a way to God and the means to attain a heaven beyond this life. Indeed, life on Earth came to be considered a prison and the fall of the soul. Salvation, through negation of life, could only come in a beyond, namely in some transcendent Heaven. The final outcome of this negation has been the materialistic philosophies and political ideologies which the West has given to the world. Presently there is a clear dichotomy on the planet, whereby western civilisation has aligned itself clearly and decisively with what has come to be called in spiritual circles the ‘materialistic consciousness’.

However, in the East we find a similar denial of life, also as an outcome of its spirituality. Interestingly, this negation took hold of the consciousness of eastern wisemen at about the same time that a similar denial caught hold of their western counterparts. About the end of the first millennium Indian spirituality veered fully toward a quest for otherworldliness: the philosophies of the day made the conclusive proclamation that all creation in matter was an ‘illusion’, a deceptive veil that seekers of Truth must tear through in order to reach the immutable, immobile, transcosmic and static Brahman; or a Self devoid of all relations in this material web of time and space.

Thus at approximately the same period in history, the stamp of otherworldliness and denial of life and the planet’s own truth of being and purpose as a home of an evolving species, became firm pillars of our civilisation. This conditioned everything. This denial coloured all our perceptions and gradually moulded every pattern we evolved for the regulation of our individual and collective life. And what we are faced with today is simply the ultimate display of that denial and negation of life. The human being has carried the formula of this negation to its fullest extremes: What was seen as the highest spiritual poise has been carried over to the material realm, or the stage upon which all the ideals and more ethereal concepts of humankind are played out; with the predictable result that now science has furnished the race with the ultimate powers for its own destruction. If the only purpose of life on this planet is to escape it somehow, never more to return, then we are wholly justified in seeking means to destroy this springboard base as the ultimate and conclusive ‘solution’.

It is important to see clearly that the root of this problem is directly connected to the religious dogmas and spiritual visions that have conditioned our living since time immemorial. Spirituality is not a static expression. It has evolved pari passu with the material evolution. In fact, there is only ONE evolution, one principle evolving through the myriad forms that constitute our world. This ‘consciousness’ has two facets, material and spiritual. But both respond to the same underlying energy and drive.

Consequently, to posit the ultimate solution in either the spirituality we know today or in materialism, with its own brand of denial of life, is inadequate. Indeed, such attempts have consistently failed. Spirituality can only offer old solutions which were themselves largely the causes of the decay. Likewise, materialistic answers are prisoners of the same insufficiencies; and continuing as we are, they will drive us to a total destruction in order to play out the drama of denial of life that spirituality has constantly espoused in one form or another, under one disguise or another.

To accurately assess the situation it is required that we examine the problem deeply, in an effort to reach the core of the matter and discover the fount from which both science and spirituality receive their driving force. Therefore, it is necessary to perceive what stands behind the play of forces; and to do so we must come to a more enlightened understanding of the evolutionary process itself. This will provide us with a more holistic assessment of the condition of the highest instrument nature makes use of for the purpose of the evolution of the species, in order to effect this upward march to ever better forms of consciousness and life: the mental human being.

For this is the self-evident purpose of evolution. It is to bring forth evermore perfect forms in order to create more complex and sophisticated networks or patterns of structured energy that can express more harmonious states of consciousness-being. Our present stage is merely one step along the evolutionary way, albeit a decisive one. We have reached a major evolutionary turning point. There is a choice: Before us lies a totally new way of life and by consequence a new world order. For this, a finer, more refined instrument has to manifest. And this is the major focus of the present crisis. We are in the process of evolving a human instrument capable of sustaining the greater cosmic forces at play through life and matter on this planet, without experiencing destructive collapse of energies or succumbing to the old ways of escape through outdated solutions and methods the world has known until now.

The human instrument as it is presently constituted pivots a void. At its centre lies a ‘black hole’ into which energies collapse, cave in, dissolve; resulting ultimately in decay and death. And out of this condition of the instrument ,through which the human consciousness perceives the reality beyond, came the projection of a world in chaos and collapse and hence the perception that salvation, of whatever order and under whatever guise, lay beyond this material universe and, above all, away from this woeful planet Earth. The demon of the drama was seen to be the senses, which wisemen understood to be the limiting factor which distorts a reality that somehow could be disconnected from the body and experienced separately, free from our physical organs of perception and hence disengaged from the world of material creation, out of which and within which these senses have evolved. Thus, ways were devised to liberate the seeker from the physical, sensual instrument, limited by its own apparently untransformable insufficiencies.

To be more specific, such projections and perceptions of our condition are the logical outcomes of a species ill-poised, but for reasons quite different than those given in current religious, mystic and spiritual explanations. The human being has an off-centre pivot of his bodily instrument, which results in a distorted perception of our world; but which is, paradoxically, caused by the perception itself. Consequently, to alter that perception it is required that concurrently we shift this axis of being–in the species–and allow evolution to carry us to a new and higher destiny.

The human instrument, an intrinsic part of the solar system and the universal harmony, is structured energy just as any other microcosmic or macrocosmic body. The human being has its ‘axis’ also, around which the individual frame is organised and because of which a separate entity can come into existence and sustain itself without dispersion, adding to this magnificent display of multiplicity within unity, which is the key feature of our material world. But because we are as yet merely a transitional species, albeit evolving to a higher form, the present ‘axis’ and its location within the body, which has come into being in accordance with certain evolutionary laws, encourages atavism as the single most important driving force of the species.

Over the ages, wisemen, philosophers, seers, mystics, have sought through various means to alter this condition. In place of the inertia of atavism they have sought to install a higher purpose. But the inadequate condition of the instrument through which perception is made, provided only a partial understanding of the problem; and hence the techniques which were devised in order to help the human being to find release from this limiting function were in themselves inconclusive and did nothing to alter in any way conditions on the planet. Matters progressively worsened, until finally, seeing the gravity of the situation, all those who in some way have been concerned with this problem, came to a dramatic impasse. Finding that it was apparently impossible to change this evolutionary determinism, all spiritual and religious paths proffered methods of escape from the ‘coils of this corruptible flesh’ as the only way to salvation, and to seek dissolution of the consciousness in a transcendent Beyond or a nirvanic Void. Not only has this done nothing to change conditions on Earth, it has complicated the task of discovering the solution. And finally we find ourselves, as a species, facing possible annihilation.

Let us demonstrate the subtle ways in which this notion of irredeemability has penetrated the thinking of even those philosophers whom one would expect to perceive the position differently, primarily because they are indefatigably engaged in the task of instructing men and women the world over on the ways to a better life. But a better life where? If it is here, on this planet, then the flaws that emerge in these teachings must be pointed out, which will serve to expose the fact that on the basis of just such erroneous visions the human condition is what it is and cannot hope to change. Rather, the condition becomes compounded.

To illustrate, we may quote a statement of one of the most eminent thinkers of our times, the late J. Krishnamurti:

This declaration is sure to appeal to all those who have become disenchanted with life in the body and in the material universe of which measure is the salient feature, and who have subsequently posited the goal of their quests in some extra-cosmic heaven or transcendent Beyond. For, what is Krishnamurti really stating?

It is simply this: the higher reality is not of this world, measurable in time and space, and any such attempt to find truth within this material (measurable) universe is futile. Hence this statement is a denial of life and fosters a totally divisive consciousness (certainly not the aim of his teaching efforts on the surface), whereby truth is OUTSIDE of time and space and hence beyond our world. God, the supreme Reality, or Truth is not, according to Krishnamurti, found in what is measurable.

It is this sort of postulation that has carried us to the point of such a tremendous evolutionary crisis. And lamentably, it is men and women concerned preeminently with the spiritual well-being of humankind who have contributed most to this situation, either by encouraging the faithful to live rightly and morally–but only for the purpose of reaching ‘heaven’ after death; or else by subtly and more often unknowingly, as in the case of Krishnamurti, consolidating the perception of an untransformable, irredeemable material creation, into which the soul and spirit of the human being has fallen and out of which some form of escape must be found in order to know truth in its transcendent, pristine and uncontaminated purity.

Krishnamurti, provides us with another example of the way in which this vision has permeated the intelligentsia, in quarters that one could not have anticipated. Of late two books have appeared with transcripts of his conversations with the physicist David Bohm. It is interesting to observe that Krishnamurti succeeds in carrying Bohm, a physicist and hence a person supremely trained in the art of Measure, into his vision of a featureless void, in which time is an illusion and there is no becoming. A portion of their conversation will suffice to illustrate the nature of the problem:

And further on, Krishnamurti makes this revealing statement:

This clearly, is the perception that must change if at all a new species and a new world order can safely take their place upon the planet for which they are destined. This calls for a complete readjustment in the ‘lens of our seeing’, precisely our ‘instrument of measure’, whereby the Earth comes into focus not as some eternal, irredeemable Hell that a chastising Creator has condemned us to, but rather the planet that serves a noble purpose in the cosmic order. This purpose is to evolve continuously higher and better forms of life. At present the human being is in transition toward a new condition. The breakdown we witness about us, inclusive of the marvels of technology that the human mind has brought into being, is an indication of that new order that is arising. The axis of the human instrument is being encouraged to shift to a higher pivot, whereby the present atavism is no longer a rigid cross to which we are nailed as a race. Rather, the new species is liberated from this compelling drive and begins then a more conscious participation in this grand act of Becoming through which a new instrument is being wrought. But for this to occur, the orientation of our quest and its consequent goal, based on a truly new perception of the higher reality of existence, must shift. The direction must cease to be otherworldly, no matter how camouflaged this may be, as noted by the example furnished above. The answer lies here, on Earth, in the body–but transformed by the power of a new seeing.

How is this achieved? The new axis is not metaphysical. It is a pivot that comes into being in accordance with precise evolutionary laws involving time. By working with time in a particular manner, it is possible to restructure the consciousness, and ultimately the physical being, around a higher pivot. This cannot be accomplished while religions and the old spirituality block the process by emphasis on a metaphysical experience that disengages the human being from any spiritually and materially meaningful contact with the physical world, and consequently absolves him from any responsibility therein. According to these now outdated ways, the purpose of life was to somehow find escape from it, to either expiate one’s sins and reach heaven, or to work out a karma and thereby become freed from taking birth again on this woeful planet. In the midst of such a conditioning, it was not possible to alter the evolutionary pattern, insofar as the means to do so, in particular a conscious work with time, were denied their truth and the part they played to attain a higher reality.

The new world is a world in which both the being and the becoming are harmonised in the vision. Therefore Sri Aurobindo describes the choice of destiny that faces mankind at this crisis point as an accepting and embracing precisely of the becoming, as the means to attain the ultimate apotheosis, an evolutionary leap to a totally new status:

While the old degenerates into chaos and begins its collapse, there is simultaneously a work in progress to evolve a new species. The process entails, however, a laying of correct foundations. That is, a new ‘blueprint’ is being evolved, the lines of which are drawn by time, the power of evolution for the gestation of any new form.

The new ‘blueprint’ being established at present is a pattern of harmony. Indeed, its inspirer is the closest, most complete pattern of harmony that we can observe and of which we are an intrinsic part. It is the solar system–seen with a new eye and an entirely new and different instrument of perception and measurement. This blueprint of a new consciousness-being will provide the basis for a new world order. The outcome is a planetary society, inspired in its governance by the very harmonics of our System and in particular founded upon a vision that sees and accepts the Earth as the place where upon this progression is destined to occur.

But foremost in this evolutionary leap is the question of the purpose of evolution; and by consequence the purpose of our planetary home within the scheme of the cosmic order. It is clear that while we continue to turn to the old spirituality for solutions to our present state of collapse, we are only compounding that collapse, insofar as all spirituality considers life in this cosmos to be a fall and posits salvation in some form of a Beyond, unevolving and static. The dramatic shift that is required is then the complete refocusing of the lens we are provided with for evolution on Earth, and the resultant consciousness that introduces an entirely new direction in our perceiving. We cease to deny life and material creation as channels for expression of the highest truth principle. Rather, we see these as instruments on Earth of what Sri Aurobindo has called, the ‘life divine’.

There is a tested method to establish this new blueprint. It utilises time as the creative power for this revolutionary activity. By a specific knowledge of the mechanics of our solar system and the relation of the planetary harmony to time, as experienced on Earth and in the human body, a shift is brought about in the consciousness-being of the individual practitioner, whereby a new pivot is established in the body, no longer prisoner of atavistic drives but responsive to a higher purpose. On that basis a truly new harmony establishes itself within the individual and his society. There is no longer a collapse of energies but rather a sort of mini-solar system manifests as a nuclear compound from where new influences emerge. Gradually these accumulate and extend and eventually draw into the orbit of the new System an increasingly wider sphere; until finally the entire planet becomes the home of this higher planetary society.

What evolves is therefore neither a new spirituality nor a new science or material ideology. It is something beyond all these known methods but that miraculously harmonises and integrates all the expressions of mind, life, and matter in a splendid act of synthesis. The truth of our world is a magnificent manifoldness, expressing an exquisite diversity. But-this multiple diversity is upheld and sustained by a power of integration and arises in a field of oneness, –just as our solar system is an expression of a superb manifold harmony within an integrating oneness.

This is an evolutionary process which respects the being as well as the becoming. Hence it does not seek to obliterate the cosmic harmony which is rooted in time and is the instrument for the Becoming. Rather, it evolves by the aid of those laws. Thus we can applaud Ilya Prigogine when he declares, ‘I want to feel the evolution of things. I don’t believe in transcending, but in being embedded in a reality that is temporal.’ (OMNI, May, 1983.)

The critical crossroad we have reached is mirrored in the expansion of this very solar system to the observing eye of humankind. During the past several hundred years we have seen the System increase by three planets. While over this same period, pari passu with this expansion, the consciousness of the species and the condition of our civilisation have also undergone singular alterations. An acceleration in the evolution of consciousness never before witnessed has set in during this period, particularly heightened in our century. But what is required now, that ‘choice of destiny’, as Sri Aurobindo has called it, is a conscious collaboration with this process. Prior to this critical juncture the human being was carried along on the crests of the evolutionary wave in an unconscious fashion. But now, with the birth of a new consciousness and species, poised differently, centred on the higher axis of being, the possibility arises that we may collaborate consciously, guided by the harmonics of the very cosmos we inhabit and stand in awe of: an applied cosmology, not another speculative theory.

In the midst of the chaos we see about us a sublime cosmos emerges. Its life does not depend upon the old in the midst of which it stands. It emerges as the old crumbles, uncontaminated by the morose suggestions of purposelessness that vitiate the atmosphere of this dying world. It emerges because the conditions for it are determined by higher evolutionary laws, and is hence a thing inevitable in the history of our planet’s time; even as the present mental being was an unavoidable and necessary circumstance, a step along the way but nothing more, and nobly played its role in the evolution of consciousness. The foundations of this new and higher species are solidly laid in the stratum that is indestructible. But not disengaged from material creation. Rather, these new foundations are rooted in matter and they form the basis for a new species and society.

© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet 1986

Prominent in the Indian news is the burning issue of marital rape, whether or not to amend existing laws to criminalise the act. The debate in Parliament further added fuel to the fire when the Minister dismissed the question by stating that rape in marriage did not exist insofar as in Indian culture marriage is a ‘sacrament’, the implication being that therefore there cannot be any question of rape. As was to be expected, his statement set the cat among the pigeons. Advocates of women’s rights were quick to condemn the statement as being patriarchal and revealing of the prevailing mindset that marriage actually denotes ownership of women by men; but how far will they go in bringing about a mindset shift, the necessity of which was made evident by the Minister’s statement?

Communism sought to change the mindset of the population by doing away with the conventions fostered by the old order in which religion was the most prominent binding force. Matrimony was one such tradition. It was seen to attack the very foundation of the egalitarian society Marx and Lenin sought to introduce. The truth be told, as marriage stands today it is a means to subjugate women in most cases. The Indian Minister made that clear enough when he brushed aside the right of a woman to protect herself from the violence of rape, especially and above all rape perpetuated by her husband, by claiming that the sanctity of marriage precludes any question of rape taking place! What he really meant was that sex is an obligation in marriage and cannot be denied. The woman, ‘owned’ by her husband when she enters marriage, must succumb to that obligation even if it be by force.

This slavery was sought to be done away with by Communism, but the irony is that one minor form of patriarchy was simply replaced by a major one: the patriarchy of the all-powerful State. This reveals that it is not such a simple problem to solve because the root-cause must be dealt with, and that lies deep within the psychological constitution of the human being, particularly women.

In the mid 1980s I wrote a paper entitled The New Way of Woman. One of the main points I made was that if the condition of women was ever to change in the world, the shift had to come first in women themselves.

There is a larger issue to question here: The entire structure of civilisation – east, west, north, south – is binary. I call it the Binary Creation. Marriage is a critical element in that structure: it is the glue that holds it together; in that is included almost everything civilisation as we know it across the globe has created. Therefore it is cherished by traditionalists of whatever hue.

But at the behest of the Zeitgeist, society has a way of challenging those old structures because they stand in the way of a new breath of freedom women can now experience, provided they realise that these institutions are the shackles of their own choosing. They ostensibly ‘protect’ women and offer them the security in law they would otherwise lack. And it is this lust for security that is the favourite tool of those who oppose the new times.

In the zodiac based on the Vedic correspondences of the signs, this aspect of life is conveyed very clearly in the fourth sign Cancer. If we view the zodiac as a ‘journey’, the journey of an individual from the moment he or she takes a first independent breath as one enters the wheel of Earth time, the fourth stage is seen as the plunge of the Divine Spark we all carry within, fully into this creation of dense Matter. It therefore marks the stage when the ego becomes the axis around which the individual’s life experiences revolve. But hidden within is that Divine Spark, veiled initially – because that very fact is the purpose of birth on this third planet of our solar system: it is here, and only here, that the soul incarnates to experience its fall into the oblivion matter imposes, and to remain hidden there until Time encourages that Spark to grow in intensity into a flame that eventually illumines every nook and cranny of the many layers (veils) beneath which it lays hidden – but also protected.

The ego-axis causes us to find succour in those veils. In common parlance, they are our ‘comfort zone’. There is no better way to describe the nature of Cancer in the Journey and what it offers the human being on this often perilous though intriguing, and always mysterious voyage so unique to Earth life.

In the Veda this stage is personified as Diti, the Mother of Division. Though she lacks unity Diti plays an important role in our lives because she lies at the root of the Binary Creation; the ego, as our axial balancing structure, is her tool. Thus, on that foundation we create societies, from primitive to the apparently more enlightened, with the many institutions and laws that serve Diti in securing the perpetuation of her binaryinterests and maintaining the status quo. In this dark, dense world of Matter, the quest for security is the paramount goal, along with the propagation and survival of the binary creation. Darwin got it wrong: it is not the survival of the species that drives evolution; it is the quest for the supremacy of Diti’s creation in this particular round of the Precession of the Equinoxes as seen in the Map of the 12 Manifestations. The purpose or goal set before us as an evolving species in this vast cycle of 77,760 years is the establishment of a civilisation that has surpassed the binary and entered the realm of the Mother of Unity; she is known as Aditi in the Veda, or Capricorn in the zodiac where she stands in direct opposition to Diti of Cancer.

The key feature of a unitary creation is that each thing is in its rightful place. Nothing needs to be discarded (i.e. destroyed) but putting all aspects of material creation ‘in their place’ introduces an integral and harmonious balance such as we have never known, at least in the current Great Circle. But it is a destiny we cannot avoid: to establish a society in which women will play prominent roles, as seen in the Aditi/Diti axis of the Goddesses. For indeed, the ego-axis is not the full story. It is the reality of fragmentary perception demonstrated in a linear appraisal that cuts the zodiacal wheel in half, unmindful that there is another, higher hemisphere – that the Journey is of 12 stages: six constitute the lower hemisphere whose regent is Diti; six are the higher, ruled over by Aditi. When only the lower forms the totality of our world Diti then supplies our needs, good ‘mother’ that she is; foremost of which is the ego-axis. This implies that nothing can be ‘in its rightful place’ because one’s universe (journey through time) consists only of six stages, central to which is Diti (Cancer), the Mother of Division. In this condition we abide in a woeful state of incompletion.

Our civilisation, societies the world over are the outcome of this fragmentary appreciation of life. Diti would be another name for Eve. In the Biblical tale the task and its trajectory are made evident: the Old Testament offers a very exact description of the Mental/Binary Creation of Adam and Eve. It lays bare the trials and tribulations of the races on Earth that bear the burden of the Old – the Mental/Binary structure – in the throes of a process of ever greater division (Diti’s expertise) until finally in the last book of the New Testament, The Revelation, the conquering principle of the Soul is described and the new order of Unity, based on the number 12, can then take its place on the planet with the perception of a complete system by unveiling the higher hemisphere and each thing can be put in its rightful place. The entire denouement is centred on the number 12. The descent of the ‘City of Light’, as described in the final chapters of The Revelation, measures 144, the square of 12, further divided into four quarters (the gates) – i.e., the zodiac. (See The New Way 3, Chapter 3, Karma and the Human Cell, or the Genesis of Man.)

The zodiac is the horoscope of the Earth. All the details of our collective and individual journeys are contained in its twelve sacred symbols. This is the gift provided to humanity to serve as an anchor as we move across turbulent waters to reach the shores of the new world of Unity and Truth. In The Magical Carousel, the new myth for the new age, the corresponding attributes of the Diti/Aditi axis (Earth’s actual orbital axis around the Sun, balanced on the December/June solstices) are clearly explained. Regarding Diti the key symbol is presented at the entry to the sign Cancer, the Crab, as the children Val and Pom-pom are carried out of Gemini-land by a large bird:

Darkness encloses them, like being suspended in a black onyx stone…Before long they stop descending and can see the approaching surface of water which slowly becomes illuminated… The bird glides smoothly over the water, circling many times until finally he seems to find what he is searching for. Gently and with great care he deposits Val and Pom-pom on what appears to be a rock slightly protruding above the top of the water…

…Tired now after the long journey and in spite of their fear, they curl up close to each other and fall into a deep sleep… For a long while they remain like this – who knows how long really – until they are awakened from their slumber by a soft rocking motion.

‘What?’ cries Val, ‘the rock is moving! We’re moving, Pom-pom. Wake up!’

They shake the sleep out of their frail bodies and in no time are wide awake, with eyes enormous and shiny in the pitch darkness… After a seemingly endless ride very soon the rock cautiously emerges from the water and to the amazement, horror, fright and wonder of Val and Pom-pom, they see it is a huge crab they have been sleeping on, an enormous coral-coloured Crab! (The Magical Carousel, Aeon Book, pp.32-33.)

The shock the children receive is when the solid rock they thought they were sleeping on begins to move. This describes the ego-axis better than any more complicated definition. It is believed to be stable and to provide the firm security creatures on Earth desire and cherish. But the tale describes the true condition: Stability of the ego is a gross illusion. Given this introduction the remaining passage through the Queen of Night/Diti’s realm (Cancer) is simply the temptation presented to the children of the myriad distracting disguises Diti dons to beguile her audience and provide individuals in her care with all the comforts and security demanded in the unstable world of fragmentation and division.

This is our world, the world we have created for ourselves. And this is what is being dismantled brick by brick. But the key of higher knowledge that the zodiac provides is the map that assures us of a grand resolution. As a global civilisation we are in the process of opening up the higher hemisphere to the conscious experience of all humanity and the shift from a binary to a unitary creation, the implication of which is that the measure of 12 has become our integrated field of perception and the foundation of a new world order. The Mother made the matter clear in her letter on the subject: with the ego in place we cannot reach the higher realms of the Supermind.

Diti is not alone, for her cherished ego-axis indeed offers no stability, just as the moving rock/crab indicates. Stability arises only with the discovery or unveiling of the other end of the axis – that then actually brings an axis into being. It is Aditi, the Mother of Unity. In The Magical Carousel she is known as Omanisol. And to convey the sense of permanence and stability she represents in evolution, the chosen symbol is no longer a rock/crab but the magnificent sacred Mountain, her abode and apex of the Journey. As the children scale the mountain they finally emerge at the summit:

A woman sits before them.

She is clothed in robes that blend with the mountain, in fact she herself appears to be a continuation of the mountain itself. She sits on the ground with legs crossed and covered by the robes, immobile and breathing ever so slightly, in a manner which makes one feel the physical life in her is suspended. Her face is not old but rather ancient, and her half-closed eyes reveal an understanding that is of the nature of the mountain over which she presides. Omanisol is cloaked in an aura of serenity and strength, of timelessness and intensity, which becomes a part of the children merely by being in her presence…. (pp.111-112.)

There is not even a hint of instability in this imagery. Omanisol presides over the entire universal manifestation; all the worlds, subtle and dense are a part of her dominion. She presides over those vast spaces but she also resides in the deepest recesses of our hearts. Indeed, this sacred Mountain (reproduced in the Gopurams of every Hindu Temple) is not reached by any extension outside or in the beyond. Omanisol is the Earth herself. That is, she embodies the Earth’s sacred and divine Purpose within our Sun’s planetary family.The Magical Carousel maps out the way to reach this soul-essence of our very planet (Omanisol) in Chapter 9, as the children leave the land of Sagittarius carried by the Centaur to the border:

‘They gallop off at great speed, crossing the violet and fuchsia coloured land, for the Centaur makes every effort to fulfil his mission properly to bring the children to their destination on time. He travels so swiftly they seem to go even faster than sound and light, and at a certain moment the very space around them disappears, they are almost unaware of moving at all and seem to have entered a point right within themselves.’ (p.102)

Earth creatures need be wary of only two adversaries: Inertia and Incompletion. In fact, they go hand-in-hand. In each of the stages/lands the children experience there is in evidence a pernicious effort to hold them back, to halt the journey, to stop the movement, thereby never reaching the higher realms of the supramental Truth-Consciousness; otherwise known as the Solar World. There is no evil other than this: Inertia; no ‘sin’ – original or otherwise; and Inertia is simply another meaning of Death: one is held back so tightly, compressed till one is forced by the power of Inertia to exit the material plane. Thus, there is simply incompletion for the mental human species. Death intervenes and cuts the Journey short so that one never reaches the Solar World, the abode of Omanisol. In such a condition of incompletion nothing can find its rightful place.

When the ego is our pivot the higher potential we all carry within cannot come to fruition: the field – or our material base – does not accommodate the abundance of energy required to reach the Summit. The field of life must be made to encompass the full circle (see diagram) and all four quarters must be cleansed of those disfiguring veiling substances the ego structure creates, those beguiling disguises Diti so artfully displays in order to distract the travellers who visit her realm.

We are those travellers. Collectively, as representatives of the mental species we stand right in the middle of her realm. To pin us down she has enlarged her ‘wardrobe’ of disguises to a degree never before imagined. But the Time-Spirit is the vahana/carrier of each Soul in evolution. We can never succumb to Inertia under whatever guise. The Time-Spirit impels us forward; and in this culminating 9th Manifestation our collective destiny is to open up to our evolving collective consciousness the full 12 by penetrating ‘realms very few reach’. In the words of the great wizard and philosopher, Heropidus Heronimous:

‘You are about to discover the last three realms, the regions very few consciously reach. Remember Heropidus Heronimous and all his teachings, for in those realms this knowledge is used. Good-bye my little ones, good-bye…’ (Ibid, p.102)

Posted in Messages and tagged Binary, Cancer, Capricorn, India, Map of the Manifestations, Mind, Sacred Feminine, Veda, Zodiac.

2 thoughts on “Contours of the Binary Creation”

1. Lori Tompkins4 May 2015 at 6:57 pmThea, This is such a helpful message … towards being more aware of the binary forces at work and of the need to center. Regarding:‘Darwin got it wrong: it is not the survival of the species that drives evolution; it is the quest for the supremacy of Diti’s creation in this particular round of the Precession of the Equinoxes as seen in the Map of the 12 Manifestations.’I am not understanding ‘the quest for the supremacy of Diti’s creation’ as being what drives evolution.I understand what is next:‘The purpose or goal set before us as an evolving species in this vast cycle of 77,760 years is the establishment of a civilisation that has surpassed the binary and entered the realm of the Mother of Unity; she is known as Aditi in the Veda, or Capricorn in the zodiac where she stands in direct opposition to Diti of Cancer.’Can you further expand on your seeing of ‘the quest for the supremacy of Diti’s creation’ as a driving force of evolution?Reply ↓
2. TheaPost author5 May 2015 at 2:36 amIt is very much like what I write about the Old Testament. The date Creationists give for the beginning of it all is very accurate. However, not the beginning of God’s creation but it was then that the Mental supremacy was set to be demolished with the advent of the Supermind and the 9th Avatar. Jews and Arabs stand for the Mental and Vital principles; and you must agree that they do embody these principles. They are at war with each other and it will remain so until India steps up to the plate and starts demonstrating the Third Way that is housed on her soil. For now she is stuck in the mud and does not see her role clearly, only in bits and pieces. It takes courage to move on…This is the same. Darwin was looking at evolution from the aboluste perspective: a very long stretch of time during which humans evolved from primates, etc. But actually what we grasp of the process from this point in time is the situation we are faced with at present. We study the 9th Manifestation and the task to be accomplished during this period of 6480 years. And that is the displacement of Mind in favour of the next higher principle. But to accomplish that we must ‘raise the pivot’ from the sex centre (the ego-axis I write about) to the higher position (the centred man of Leonardo’s famed drawing that has played such an important part of my work). Leonardo drew it just as it is: we must raise the pivot of our consciousness-being so that we set a new purpose in the volutionary process – no longer atavistic but a ‘higher’ purpose. This is explained in ‘The Magical Carousel’ well enough – the transition from Virgo to Libra, emergence in the higher hemisphere because of dedication to ‘a higher cause’.It is pointless to dwell on the entire evolutionary process from the beginning because it has been handled differently. I hate speculation so we will leave it at that.Tell me if I have missed something. TheaReply ↓

A film last night, Dark Matter, caused me to ponder over certain aspects of the new cosmology and its reception – not in the corridors of science of course, but in India and abroad in quarters that should take a keen interest in this new postulation because it is the only Indocentric cosmology since the Vedic/Puranic Age. Further, there is nothing in it that would offend the scientifically-minded because it is based on facts that were not available in the Puranic era – certain truths seen in the innermost consciousness of the Seer many times had to be formulated figuratively, though the Indocentric cosmology of the sages did make perfect sense at the time because of a common ‘language’ understood by all. Fortunately, that sacred language continues to thrive throughout the world, except in India due to a clever strategy that was set in motion in the Dark Ages.

The New Way cosmology, on the other hand, follows similar principles and employs that very same language – the main ingredient being a contemporary version of the Mt Meru concept, the centrepiece of the Puranic vision; this was Bharat, the continental embodiment of the sacred Mountain, and all the other continents fanning out from that central point. However, the enormous leap forward is that now we take the full Earth, exactly as she stands in the planetary harmony, and using longitude and latitude coordinates we proceed to locate that sacred Mt Meru that is Bharat today on the globe, based on a zodiacal ‘ruler’ that provides a knowledge basis to the operation: Mt Meru is indeed the centre, India, via her zodiacal sign Capricorn, determined by the ruler laid horizontally (longitude) and vertically (latitude) across the Earth. Thus her ‘centrality’ is no longer restricted to the visionary plane of the Seer but given a factual basis in both time and space. Mt Meru/Bharat, so measured, is the embodiment of the sign known as India’s astrological ruler from time immemorial: Capricorn, the ‘mountain’ of the zodiac, confirming the earlier Seer’s vision based on an inner knowledge of the subcontinent’s essence properties. This is the knowledge-basis of the sacred mountain Meru, no longer condescendingly labelled a quaint tale or outright superstition.

Capricorn hieroglyph on undivided India

And here is the zodiacal symbol-map that confirms the antiquity of the knowledge, its Capricorn essence extending even to Bharat’s geography.

Indeed, there is not a trace of superstition in this new Indocentric cosmology, an updating from the Puranic Age. However, there are certain demands placed on its appraisers. One must first of all accept that the cosmology carries its own science with its own language; just as we accept that physics uses the language of mathematics, so must we realise that this postulation is also based on its own formulas and formulations which constitute its operational methodology via its own language, resulting ultimately in a new paradigm. And here is where problems arise from quarters none would have expected. But the film Dark Matter that set off these reflections, explains why. It portrays the travails of a brilliant Chinese cosmology student who enrols in an American university for his PhD. Eventually he is driven to a psychological breakdown by his doctoral mentor because the candidate’s thesis disproves certain conclusions in his own String Theory cosmology, on the basis of which the mentor’s scientific career had flourished, bringing him considerable fame. Now he sees it threatened by the candidate’s brilliant discovery regarding dark matter. He was consequently denied a PhD, based on what can only be termed vested interests. Vested interests cover a broad spectrum that can be more clearly defined as ego-interests with their zillion manifestations, proper to the billions of humans who populate this ego-driven world.

The film ends in tragedy and the viewer is left heartbroken at how a brilliant talent was shamelessly snuffed out.

Along with this viewing I happened to be reading an article in a past issue of Atlantis Rising, #107, September/October 2014, treating the very same theme when in the scientific community a new discovery forces the old guard to accept that they are faced with a ‘paradigm shift’ in light of which ‘physics would have to start over’. Moray King, a systems engineer is quoted as saying in an interview in Jeane Manning’s column ‘Tracking the News on the Coming Energy Revolution’. King comments on just how vicious the threatened group can get: ‘Talking about a paradigm violation becomes serious when a claim is declared as fraud’… Further on he lays down some rules for ‘online chat rooms’:

• When you call someone a fraud, name the type of fraud you think they’re perpetrating.
• Understand the paradigm you’re in so when you say ‘disobeyed the laws of physics’ you know which paradigm those laws are in…

Recent exchanges in our own online Forum under the topic ‘Sidereal or Tropical’ caused me to consider writing this article for our readers because of the play of circumstances that forced me to take a serious look at the similar allegations levelled at me personally and the new cosmology I have formulated; I repeat, from quarters that should rejoice in the updating it signifies and the potential for removing the taint of superstition on matters Puranic. I mentioned vested interests at the root of the accusations in the face of new and potentially threatening discoveries in science. On our own Forum we have a clear example of just how that works in the ego-centred human being. I too was recently labelled a fraud – and why? Simply because the basis of the new Indocentric cosmology is the zodiac; more specifically – and here lies the rub – the tropicalzodiac. This is what we find as the foundational language of the Puranas and its mythology and displayed in every temple across India. The sacred mountain is the most prominent and obvious connection. When the devotee passes through and beneath the main gopuram to enter the sacred precinct, it brings to his visit the lived experience of Mt Meru, the sacred Mountain of Capricorn. In the symbolism of sacred architecture the Gopurams are that Mountain.

The main Gopuram of the Srirangam temple
in Tamil Nadu, South India, where the purest tradition is found.

Lamentably, during the Dark Ages a different formulation gradually gained ascendancy and ultimately did away with the former based on the tropical zodiac and its related mythology, as in the cosmology of the New Way. It introduced another ‘zodiac’ based on the imaginative animal figures made up of the fixed stars in the sidereal sphere, called Nakshatras. In the traditional astrology practised outside of India they are known as the Mansions of the Moon and were brought from India by Al Biruni, the Arab scholar-traveller who in the 12^thcentury planted the damaging seeds that later flowered into the full-blown Nirayana system of astrological computations and ritual timings in use today.

I have stated many times and I must state again that these misguided reformists, whatever their motivation, are measuring in the wrong circle. At the end of this article I offer readers a graphic image of the problem and a brief explanation with the facts of the case.

Al Biruni’s Mansions of the Moon divides the zodiac circle into 27 parts based on the mean daily motion of the Moon which is 13.20 degrees. Moving through the circle cumulatively, from 0 degree through to the 360^th, each point where this measure falls is called a ‘critical degree’. Any competent astrologer knows that when a planet is located on one of those degrees, whatever that planet represents will play a prominent role in the individual’s life.

Unfortunately Nirayanis, who call themselves by the misnomer Vedic Astrologers, carried the matter further – because there is a secret agenda behind this rise of thought in India. Muslim invaders, their own history records, destroyed thousands of temples across the land because of the role temples stepped in to play during the Puranic Age to preserve the Veda. But there was a far more insidious attack in the wings, with the potential of bringing the Sanatana Dharma to an end as it was known in the Vedic Age. The simple yet potent device was 1) to do away with the Veda’s foundational language of the zodiac itself, whether tropical or sidereal, and pari passu 2) to destroy the cosmic connection India had enjoyed from time immemorial (see the Capricorn symbol-map); indeed, to disengage the cosmic wheel from the true Zero Point (ayanamsha), the start of the ‘journey’, as it was called in the Rig Veda, on the Aries equinox of 21 March each year. This was cleverly done by insisting on measuring in the wrong circle, and claiming, as Al Biruni had advocated centuries earlier and the Nirayanis continue to proclaim: Aries has shifted, it has moved on; it is no longer there (at the March equinoctial point). ‘The solstice has kept its place but the constellations have migrated, just the very opposite of what Vahara has fancied,’ he wrote (India, II, p.7). With this Al Biruni plants the undermining seed of a shifting zodiac, erroneously equated with and measured in the sidereal sphere.

There is what is called the Cardinal Cross in the tropical zodiac. It is composed of four signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. They are the equinoxes and solstices. Therefore an intrinsic part of the constitution of Aries is the thrust of energy as in the gunaic mode of Rajas, or Creation of the fundamental trinity Creation, Preservation, Dissolution. Actually Aries does not ‘exist’ disconnected from the March equinox; similarly with the others on the Rajas/Creation cross. So, to claim, as Al Biruni did, that while the solstice remained in place the constellations (zodiac) have moved away from the zodiacal connection with the Cardinal Cross, reveals a basic ignorance of the cosmic harmony. What is extraordinary is that no pundit, to my knowledge, rose up and refuted his claim. This is the crux of the Nirayana system Hindus follow, this claim that a ‘shift’ has taken place and therefore periodic ‘corrections’ must be made to accommodate it.

According to these Nirayanis, while measuring that purported 0 degree Aries in the wrong circle – the circle of fixed stars where no equinoxes and solstices exist – this 0 point has shifted, therefore a correction is needed to move the start of the circle back by 23 days. Consequently, based on their astronomical wisdom, disconnected from the alleged superstition of astrology which astronomers believe they have improved upon, we must agree to celebrate each new zodiacal year on April 14-15 and not 21 March; or, even worse, the Capricorn entry (Makar in Sanskrit, perhaps the most important festival for the Hindu collectivity) is also shifted by 23 days to 14-15 January, instead of the fourth Cardinal Cross solstice on 21 December each year when Capricorn actually begins for the whole world, not merely for Hindus, with no change – because these unchanging equinoxes and solstices are the temporal and spatial pillars of Hinduism.

In addition, the so-called shift that needs ‘correction’ varies from pundit to pundit because accuracy is impossible to achieve in the circle of fixed stars with relation to Earth, given that they are zillions of kilometres away from our solar system. The result is confusion and chaos; ultimately what should be the single most unifying factor for Hindus, a calendar that unequivocally secures the true cosmic connection, has become a most effective tool for dis-connection and endless dispute.

Today the supporting cosmic pillars of the Dharma have been wiped out of the cultural fabric where they can only be meaningful when the true link to the cosmic harmony exists. It no longer does for all practical purposes today in India, regardless of vociferous claims by the Nirayanis to the contrary. Practically, factually it exists only in the updated Indocentric cosmology of the New Way.

The tactic of undermining was superb indeed because Time itself, with each passing day, undoes the very Dharma it holds in the secret recesses of itself. Time, in the land where Mahakala is known to be above all the Gods, is made to work against itself: instead of a creative power it is one of undoing.

All is not doom and gloom however. The Vishnu Avatar’s mission stands completed. The Solar Line he heads covers all the bases, even this one, perhaps the most significant for Hindus today. The Third in the Line comes with the express mission of dismantling this falsehood and re-establishing the supremacy of Shiva as Mahakala. She takes birth to re-establish the tropical zodiac as the foundational language of the Tradition, for there are no Cardinal Poles – equinoxes and solstices – in the sidereal circle of the fixed stars beyond our solar system. Astronomers require – nay, demand – points of light in the heavens that they can see with their human naked or mechanical eyes; for them the division of the ecliptic into 12 signs (the tropical zodiac) does not exist, or is of no consequence because it is not visible, while the Sage sees the light manifested within as without, he does not need external points of light to measure Truth, for he is the truth-seer. For him there is no difference: truth, the Rishi knows, lies within, uncontaminated by human projections covered over in vested interests the ego feeds on. For the Seer all is One, and on the basis of Oneness the truth of the supramental Gnosis is known. Thus the Third’s mission is completed with the New Way and its updated cosmology. Those who see and wish to follow the Journey of the Rig Veda have this new paradigm at their disposal.

Why are the Nirayanis so incensed? They call the Third a fraud, and in times gone by in the print and electronic media, a charlatan – and even the most incendiary label of all: anti-Hindu. It is always the same group, then and now, the followers and practitioners of the sidereal Nirayana system of astrological computation, those who falsely call themselves Vedic Astrologers. The only truly Vedic astrology/cosmology exists in the New Way today. But their desperation to discredit is understandable from the ego-driven perspective. If the New Way rises, in that very rise their system crumbles into dust of its own and is cast into the cosmic waste bin as another of Time’s useless residues. It is the dross that is eliminated when the pure gold of the supramental Truth-Consciousness is cast into the alchemical cauldron to sort things out. We are in the midst of just such a period of conclusively defining and sorting things out.

After all, what have they to show for themselves? Dozens of ayanamshas, chaos, disunity in the Hindu community on this essential issue, and a total lack of higher knowledge – for the Nakshatras they base their system on do not contain Vedic knowledge. They served a purpose in the Dark Ages of anchoring in Time’s vast vault, but never were they meant to displace the Vedic initiate’s Journey.

Gnosis, now enhanced by the descent of Supermind, is found only in the Vedic Journey as mapped out in the tropical zodiac. And, above all, it is only with the tropical zodiac of the ecliptic plane, balanced on the unchanging equinoxes and solstices that we can read the cosmic credentials of the Vishnu Avatar and his line in this 9^th Manifestation. This, beyond any doubt, is the primary goal: to create such confusion in the most important area of the Sanatana Dharma, the cosmic harmony wherein the true Vishnu Avatar is recognised by his cosmic credentials, and the impostors unmasked. The Sanatana Dharma hinges on this recognition of the true emanation of Vishnu because yuge-yuge he comes to re-establish order, first and foremost the cosmic order.The Dasavataras themselves, for the Sanatana Dharma, are like unto the Polar Star of the zodiacal Age in which they appear. We are blessed to be living in this 9^th Manifestation, and in the Aquarian Age that ushered in the electronic revolution with the higher octave of its traditional ruling planet Mercury in the mix today – the 7^th planet Uranus. The Negators and nay-sayers can also have their day in the Sun by this new-found freedom, but Uranus allows the Internet to give us finally OUR place under the Sun as well, instead of being conveniently marginalised as this New Way has been for so long.***Diagrams for Part One:

Ganga, river of January, measured on
the body of India via the new cosmology’s
zodiacal ruler

Here we have the same constellation and sidereal spheres, but with the Vedic One Circle central, divided into the four Cardinal Points, the all-important equinoxes and solstices, with the 23-day ‘shift’ included to show the actual position of the Hindu calendar.

I have always sustained that the course the evolution of consciousness takes on this planet is easily discernible in a host of ordinary developments. That is, we can, when equipped with the proper keys of higher knowledge and trained to see in a new way, assess not only WHERE we are headed as a civilisation but also at which point we stand in this transitional period. This assessment can be made even by a simple perusal of the daily newspapers over a period of time.

        But a word of caution should be given in this regard. Decades ago a reading room where newspapers were kept was opened in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry for disciples, and the Mother was asked to give the room a name. It was her custom to name virtually everything that came into being in the Ashram as a means, it would seem, of putting a specific force into the object or enterprise which would render it thereafter a channel for that special force to operate, in the area indicated by the name itself. Since newspapers were kept in this particular reading room, the Mother named it ‘La Salle du Mensonge’, or ‘The Room of Falsehood’.

This may seem offensive to certain champions of the press. However, one need only assess the situation carefully to realise that our newspapers, while playing a necessary role, are also responsible for nailing the human being more firmly onto his cross of atavism. As a civilisation we are far from realising the dream of a society well informed but on the basis of unbiased and non-manipulative information; and which, at the same time, can serve society in its upward march to a higher expression. In general, newspapers cater to the baser instincts, claiming that ‘this is what the public wants to read’. At the same time, they are organs for various economic and political ideologies to spread their messages. This is often done in a camouflaged manner, to such an extent that indoctrination is carried out often entirely undetected by the reader. We are all aware of the fact that the news is manipulated and that this is done in such a way that it is impossible to perceive, making it therefore a very dangerous and potent tool.

Be this as it may, one can read the daily newspapers for an assessment of the condition of our transformative work and certain gains we have made. I have proven this point off and on by reproducing news items in Indian and foreign papers to demonstrate how these reports support our work by adding the precious qualities of actuality and realism which demonstrate how symbols can be the things symbolised, often in more powerful ways than we could come across in spiritual texts. And so, these ‘organs of falsehood’, like many other aspects of a dying world order, can also be used to reach the ultimate goal of a higher expression for the human being. The negative, at this point in the process, is seen to be ‘at the service of truth’.

Recently newspapers throughout the world have been carrying front page reports about the latest discovery on the energy front. In the context of our work this new development is perhaps the most exciting and important ‘symbol’ yet to materialise. In my view it is second only to the discovery of the newest triad of planets and the superb pattern their discoveries revealed (see The Gnostic Circle, Chapter 12). However, in the recent discovery we move from the planets to the Sun itself and hence the symbolism is something CENTRAL and not peripheral. We are moving steadily ever closer to the Source. We are dealing with Essence and the essential fibre of being, both in the individual and the collectivity. I refer to the discovery of cold fusion as the newest source of energy generation.

In Volume 1 of The New Way, I wrote that we could use energy sources as symbols in the shift humanity is making to a higher level. Until very recently all energy generation came through sources in the Earth itself, such as the various fossil fuels. Or else, power generated by elements the Earth supports in her atmosphere and on her body – wind, water, and so forth.

However, this has begun to change, and this change occurred, as usual, right on time – that is, in the just harmony of gnostic time. To illustrate, we may once again review the situation prevailing on the world stage as reported in our daily newspapers, but with the keys of knowledge the new way provides. We will see that certain crises we have experienced served to hasten or to force the shift I am describing.

Thus, in 1973 there was a severe global energy breakdown. It marked a devastating ‘before’ and ‘after’. The price of oil soared, and, what was worse, it became clear that certain nations possessing this precious commodity could hold other nations at ransom. The memory of the 1973 oil crunch is still vivid and the changes in lifestyle which it forced on people in different parts of the world still prevail. At the same time, it was this crisis that forced a more serious search for alternate energy sources. The discoveries made today have their origin in that 1973-4 breakdown.

My own yoga and work revealed that on the world scene one of the truest symbols of the new way and this great change that stands before us as a civilisation was a direct turn to the Sun as our energy provider, in more ways than one. Nuclear power is an expression of that turn. However, atomic energy was only one aspect of the story – the destructive part, or the facet of this symbolism which reveals how the old consciousness has contaminated this vital area. The true way had not yet surfaced. Nuclear power on the basis of fission has proven to be a tool of devastation and destruction. I am not merely referring to the weapons which have been born of this experience. These are perhaps minor aspects of the problem. There is another far more essential one, and it provides us with a superb example of the interconnection of things: fission is a tool of destruction because it engenders wastes which poison the planet beyond repair. The factor of accumulative poisonous wastes is the clearest indication of the inadequacy of fission as a solution to the world’s energy needs.

In 1977, while discussing the applied symbolism of energy sources – that is, energy as a symbol of mass movements of consciousness within the evolutionary framework – I wrote in Volume 1 of The New Way that prior to any breakthrough in the physical dimension there has to be a breakthrough in the realm of consciousness and the spirit. And, conversely, that science was pushing spirituality toward these breakthroughs by its accelerated pace in the discovery of new technologies. It was clear to me then, and it became even clearer with the passage of time, that the real cause of our distress can be traced to the spirituality the world has known. Unless a breakthrough occurred there, I wrote, science could not be held responsible for its misuse of knowledge. And I described the breakthroughs Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had made to permit this advance. On pages 8 and 9 of Volume 1, I wrote:

‘In this way we see that when there was an initial breakthrough in the field of spiritual research in the 1920s, a plunge into the hidden body of the Supramental Sun, carrying the very physical body along with the intent to expose even the cells of our bodies and the atoms of our Earth’s atmosphere to the highest pitch of solar power attainable at that point of time, Science followed shortly after and in the third and fourth decades of this century breakthroughs occurred in physical research which brought the secrets of the material energy naked before the eye of the scientist. The true knowledge of the Sun is no longer confined to the occult experience of a few; rather science begins to bring forth the knowledge of its source of power to the entire humanity.

‘In our own days we see that events in the world are forcing the planet’s races to turn more fully in this direction. The energy crisis of recent times [1973] is bringing man to realise the imperative need to solve the current great enigma, that of an economical, practical and safe utilisation of solar fusion power, and thus to satisfy the needs of the planet in this matter…’

The time has come for this breakthrough. In the context of the new cosmology, nuclear energy comes under the rule of Pluto. This year, 1989, of 9 power (1+9+8+9=27=2+7=9), corresponds to the 9^th planet of the solar system, Pluto. But this is no ordinary 9-power year of the rule of Pluto. Each 9 year introduces a new ennead, or cycle of 9 years; but the difference now is that this enneateric cycle from 1989 to 1998 comprises the decade of the 90s which is the period in this century of the culmination of Pluto’s influence and power. In other words, matters belonging to the domain of the 9^th planet will come to the fore and essential issues will be resolved, or at least set on their definitive way to a final and lasting solution.

Thus, 1989 is, according to the harmony of gnostic time, the correct moment for a breakthrough in fusion to occur. In addition, this breakthrough was announced at the March equinox, another felicitous timing. However, the exact day the news broke – 23.3.1989 – was an 8-power day; consequently, we know that something else must transpire before the discovery can be consolidated. The inconclusiveness of the announcement and the brouhaha it is engendering in the world of science may be a part of that working-out process the 8 demands in order to clear the way for the 9. We may therefore expect this situation to continue throughout the remainder of the year.

Another interesting point is the reaction produced by the announcement of this ‘economical, practical and safe utilisation of…fusion power’, for it highlights the hold the old consciousness has over humanity. Two branches of science are presently set at severe odds against each other – chemistry and physics. The physicists are finding it difficult to accept that this breakthrough could have occurred outside a domain which they consider to be their exclusive property. The statements one reads in the newspapers in this regard indicate a rather vicious outburst which makes us question whether or not physicists actually have the good of humanity at heart. Their concern seems to be more for the fact that they have been excluded, rather than the truth or not of the breakthrough. But there is something else to consider, of more serious consequences.

In the portion of The New Way cited above, I wrote of an ‘economical’ usage. It is immensely interesting to note that the potential breakthrough filled this qualification beyond all expectation. And this seems to be a factor that has provoked a number of research institutions to criticise the new discovery with undue severity.

Nearly two months have passed since the announcement and in this period dozens of researchers have sought to verify the claims put forth. One reads headlines such as this, from the New York Times: SCRUTINY OF FUSION EXPERIMENT PRODUCES FEW BELIEVERS AMONG PHYSICISTS (April 16, 1989). Or else this more recent one from the Indian paper, The Hindu: STEADY RESULTS FROM COLD FUSION TESTS (May 8, 1989). It seems this is becoming like the elusive AIDS virus! In this case it is the ‘elusive neutron!’. But perhaps the inability to reach firm conclusions stems from an unwillingness to accept exclusion from the achievement, and by consequence two decades of wasteful expenditure.

Taxpayers in the West have waited patiently for a breakthrough in fusion as their governments pour billions of dollars into research.  The taxpayer has funded extravagantly costly research which can only serve to make the end product equally costly.  But in the new discovery, provided it does produce the energy claimed by its discoverers, the question of an inexpensive source of energy is perfectly fulfilled.  Interestingly, this fact more than any other, it would seem, has engendered disproportionate hostility from those quarters into which billions have been channeled for what may prove to have been a useless and impractical enterprise.

Thus, we come to another aspect of the old consciousness in contrast to the new: the old ‘creates’ but in such a manner that it produces ‘wastes’; and to such a degree that the benefits are ultimately cancelled out when a certain threshold is crossed. This critical threshold has been reached and as a civilisation we must come to terms with its implications.

The Gnostic Circle and the Evolutionary Mechanism

The phrase that best indicates the nature of this threshold is ‘creation or destruction’. In past articles I have emphasised the distinction that must now be made in the light of new attainments in the Yoga. It is the difference between DESTRUCTION and DISSOLUTION. I would like to discuss this to some extent, but the focus of the present article is rather the actual mechanism which distinguishes the old from the new in its cosmic and evolutionary workings.

To illustrate, I shall give a brief presentation of the manner in which the new cosmos operates. And once again we shall investigate the BINARY nature of the old creation in order to comprehend better the essential differences between the two and the changes that must come about before the new creation can truly become a reality on Earth. Thus, one essential ingredient in a new cosmos based on an integral creation is that it must have a single ‘centre’, like the Sun in our solar system. This centre/sun maintains the system or cosmos not by feeding off its orbiting, peripheral bodies, but simply by its presence or being. It is Being, as a result of IMMOBILITY which holds the cosmos together. This is the definition of an ‘axis’, in this cosmology.

Another distinction must be made at this point. Immobility in terms of an individual’s realisation is not to be confused with equanimity. The latter is largely a psychological condition, whereas immobility is a condition of being. When through the Yoga the new alignment is brought about in one’s consciousness-being, this axis is forged and the realisation of Immobility is achieved.

This condition produces a situation in which there is no collapse, no caving in. In the core of a sun we find this condition and hence it supports the play of its orbiting bodies, creates ORDER and HARMONY and a truly CREATIVE manifestation. Energy in the core comes about by alignment, or a special convergence of ‘orbits’ or ‘directions’, as I have called them. What this superior alignment produces is a self-contained, self-replenishing source of power, hence the Centre does not feed off any other body in its system; or rather, to explain the process more accurately: it does not feed off its own body.

Fusion – the news of the day – produces energy similar to what is believed to transpire in the core of the Sun. This means a process of increase based on union, a joining of elements to create something else, rather than a shattering or a splitting of particles, the method employed in fission.

Let us use the Gnostic Circle to provide a visual image of the different processes, because the Gnostic Circle not only describes essential differences between the two but it relates them to the individual in his or her expansion of consciousness. What I am discussing is not only a global issue or a cosmic phenomenon. In our new creation, where all things are seen to be one, where oneness is the woof and warp of our perception and existence, it is imperative that the difference between fusion and fission be perceived as descriptive of the condition of each individual on the planet. Indeed, because the individual is what he or she is, the world is what it is and the old boundaries we need to exceed are what they have been.

Thus, in the innermost skeleton of the Gnostic Circle – which I have called the Sacred Triangle – there are two ‘points’ that describe fusion and fission and everything that is taking place on the individual and collective level concerning these forms of energy generation. Below, I have made a diagram of the Sacred Triangle, the heart of the Gnostic Circle’s time measure, or the 360º of the circle divided into 9 parts. (Its division into 12 parts is the space measure.) Thus the Sacred Triangle provides the Gnostic Circle with its main foundation, its ‘balancing points’ in time.

The Zero plays a prominent role in the structure. Indeed, without it there could be no Gnostic Circle, or no Golden Rod harmonising time and space directions. In the diagram the 0 corresponds to the Sun as the System’s CENTRE. One does not need to make great leaps of imagination or reasoning to appreciate that the centre of a system must in some way stand apart in the measure of the whole, but at the same time it must provide the focus of the system as well as its supportive power source. The Zero in the new cosmology answers these needs perfectly.

Thus convergence at the apex of the Sacred Triangle of the 9 and the 0 describes fusion. The way this plays itself out in the Circle is that as time moves on and an individual completes any one of the enneateric periods in his/her life, the 0 is met in the return to the 9 Point. That is, a child is born and that moment is the newborn’s 0 Point. Thereafter the infant lives the time experience on this planet and after 9 years, or the completion of the first ennead of life, there is a return to the same point. However, at 9-years old an INCREASE has occurred. One brings to that point the materialised energy which time has consolidated in the growth of the Zero/Seed; or, to convey the action more clearly: the Zero/Seed’s extension in time. Time draws the seeds of itself – contained in the 0 – into manifestation. It extends those seeds into the space of our material universe, forming ‘webs’ therein, or ‘lines’, which are tremendous potential sources of energy. By this simple process the Unmanifest is made manifest, the Absolute objectivises Itself in this act of creation, this ‘unfolding vision’ of the Supreme Consciousness.

Every return to the 9 Point provides the individual with the possibility of an increase, of tapping his or her self-contained Sun-Source of energy, insofar as the 0 and the 9 are one. The 9 is simply the extension of the 0. Thus, the 0/9 convergence in time provides increase and a constant renewal. One taps a source that is inexhaustible, provided, however, that an alignment exists which allows for this regeneration. In the new creation this is the secret to eternal renewal and immortal being.

The Function of the 4.5 Orbit

The opposite to the 0/9 Point in the Gnostic Circle is the 4.5 Orbit as the following diagram indicates. Thus, added to the Sun and Pluto at the 0/9 Point, we have the Asteroid Belt at the 4.5 Orbit.

It can be observed that this 4.5 Orbit, or the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, is not designated by any ‘point’ or angle of the Sacred Triangle, or any other angle of the full Gnostic Circle. It is truly a ‘void’. And it is rendered more so by virtue of the fact that all the lines of the enneagram (which form the 9/Time measure of the Gnostic Circle) seem to converge or indicate this Orbit. The diagram’s structure is such that it draws attention to this spot which, in terms of the visual impact the diagram produces, is a void, having no angle of the Circle’s geometry to ‘fill’ it.

Therefore this Orbit, containing millions of shattered particles and standing as it does in direct opposition to the 0/9 Point of the Sun and Pluto, provides us with a perfect description of fission. It cannot be simpler: the Asteroid Belt falls at this precise position in the Gnostic Circle, and that Orbit is characterised by an infinitude of ‘split particles’, just like the process of fission to generate energy.

We may expect therefore that passage over this Point in a person’s life has the potential of engendering similar ‘toxic wastes’ like the fission splitting of particles engenders. And this reflection carries us to the heart of the matter. The 4.5 Orbit does not indicate INCREASE. Rather, its purpose in the wheel is to produce a collapse or breakdown, a caving in, a shattering. However, this action in a new cosmos, perfectly aligned and balanced on the integral, fourfold foundation of Truth, which is the creation the Gnostic Circle indicates, is restricted to the periphery of the system and specifically those elements which might obstruct the experience proper to the 0/9 Point: acceleration of consciousness-being. Thus, in a new creation, the 4.5 Orbit holds the key to the shift from destruction to dissolution. I shall go deeply into this matter because it provides the secrets of the new world, or this emerging cosmos in which the supramental Sun is central, the inexhaustible fount of pure truth-conscious power and light.

The problem with the old creation was simply its incompleteness. In the lived experience of the race, both physically and spiritually, Whole Time was never known. The conscious experience never reached the 0/9. It was halted at the 6 and the sign Scorpio, the sign of Death. This was the measure of our solar system and it was therefore the measure of the boundaries of the individualised consciousness-being in evolution on this planet, or the blueprint of the present human species. Nothing further could be expected given the limitations of the species’ matrix.

Our times have seen an expansion of that measure, an increase to 9. The problem we face as a civilisation is the effort to live this inexorable expansion. This explains the transition we are in with all its travails.

The area in the Gnostic Circle which described the old creation’s spiritual attainments and goals was the 0º Libra Point, or the 4.5 Orbit. It was the Void with its accompanying Nothingness – a dissolving of the individualised consciousness in the static Peace of the Beyond, a dissolution reminiscent of the shattered particles in the Asteroid Belt, in those airy Libran heights. An undoing of the Self or in the Self was the key and the way. In other words, the 4.5 Orbit was the escape, the elegant exit, the ‘slit’ through which one could pass and experience a disconnection from the temporal and spatial boundaries of our world.

In The Magical Carousel the children, Val and Pom-pom, those explorers of a ‘new way’, enter the sign-land Libra in a magical elevator, which swings to and fro until a certain ‘balance’ is reached. The shaft that holds this elevator suspended in those lofty, airy heights represents the element that keeps them connected to a creation in matter, that keeps them rooted in a material universe in spite of their rise to an apparent Beyond, above the turmoil of the experience they have left below. However, The Magical Carousel describes a voyage of the new creative consciousness with its extended Measure. But in the old world, having attained that dissolution or disconnection from the temporal and the spatial, those boundaries could easily be regarded as illusory, as devoid of any intrinsic reality. Nothingness was the highest truth of the old creation. In India, as in the rest of the world, this situation drove the spiritual seeker onto the path of otherworldliness. I repeat, it was the INCOMPLETENESS of that creation which accounted for this development.

We are now in the 9^th Manifestation, an era which began in 234BC and extends for 6480 years thereafter. As in the human gestation, the 9 in this cosmic/planetary sense also indicates a completed process or gestation. Hence it is only in this Manifestation that we may come to know and to live the COMPLETE wheel. Thus, the position in the Gnostic Circle which describes the greater boundary or goal for the new creation living in Whole Time is the 0 [degree] Capricorn Point. It is with the addition of the final quarter of the circle, as a lived experience, that the void is filled.

Another description of the 4.5 action is to become relieved of ‘excess baggage’ during its time period. This is an accumulation which the individual experiences because in the present imperfect alignment of the species, one does not live in Simultaneous Time, as I have called it. Therefore a residue is accumulated as one lives the time experience on Earth and this creates inertia which impedes acceleration. At the 4.5 passage in an ideal condition, a mechanism is set in motion to dissolve these residues.

While on the subject of the 4.5 Orbit, there has been another of those unusual synchronisations in this regard which has so characterised our work. In this context, let me point out that on the very day of the announcement of the fusion breakthrough (real or unreal – this has yet to be established), another happening occurred as if to lend confirmation to the connection I am making between the Asteroid Belt and its relation to the 0/9 and the experience of fission/fusion. On 23 March 1989 a hitherto undetected asteroid made a very close approach to the Earth (astronomically speaking), to such an extent that it made front-page news. This asteroid thus crossed the Earth’s orbit on the day of the fusion announcement; and I must point out that the Gnostic Circle is essentially a description of orbit interrelation and harmony.

In The Magical Carousel, Chapter 10, and its companion volume Commentaries, I have described the Capricorn experience of Simultaneous Time which leaves no residue. In light of the above, those who have read the story can better appreciate the symbolism involved in the Time-Spirit’s rise into the chamber of self-discovery and soul realisation, thus FILLING the empty space in the centre of the floor. I quote here this portion of the tale:

‘…At the moment they feel it all coming to a climax they are thrust into a solitary, isolated chamber of bare walls. Left to themselves in total silence, they tightly hold hands in a frantic need to feel they are not completely alone. But the sense of abandon is strong and almost too much for them. Val and Pom-pom are at a point of utter despair when an insistent, continuous ticking is heard through the heavy silence. The sound increases and increases, becoming louder with each tick until it is right upon them and apparently in their very presence. They begin running round and round the room, passing their hands along the bare walls to make sure there are no secret doors and are soon at the point of exhaustion and collapse on the ground.

‘Lying there in complete stillness they become aware of a hole in the middle of the room, which seems to have been there all the while. The children crawl up to it, peer over the rim and down below they see an old, old man with flowing beard and long white hair, seated at a table with a huge book open before him. Behind him stands a great clock, unusual and unique for there are only three symbols drawn on its face: a minus to the left, a plus to the right and a circle in the middle. But there are no hands pointing anywhere as one would normally expect. The ticking is loud and strong now for it comes from this very clock.

‘As they gaze at the scene below, the old gentleman, table and clock slowly rise into the centre of the room through the hole…’ (p.109).

These symbols explain cosmic processes as well as the individual’s own lived experience in the evolution of consciousness on the planet. Indeed, what is the culmination of Val and Pom-pom’s passage through the Capricorn mountain? The experience they live after the ‘birth that fills the void’ is the immobility I have mentioned earlier as the realisation that sustains the new cosmos. After meeting the Time-Spirit, the children reach the mountaintop, and…

‘A woman sits before them.

‘She is clothed in robes that blend in colour with the mountain, in fact she herself appears to be a continuation of the mountain itself. She sits on the ground with legs crossed and covered by the robes, immobile and breathing ever so slightly, in a manner which makes one feel the physical life in her is suspended. Her face is not old but rather ancient, and her half-closed eyes reveal an understanding that is of the nature of the mountain over which she presides. Omanisol is cloaked in an aura of serenity and strength, of timelessness and intensity, which become a part of the children merely by being in her presence. In the same still attitude, a unicorn sits by her side.

‘The mountain peak is enveloped in the rays of the brightest midday sun, which, however, Val and Pom-pom cannot locate in the sky. This vivid light makes it possible to see over an enormous distance, an unending stretch of land on all sides, revealing every type of landscape – dominated by the abode of Omanisol. As they face this majestic sight and become evermore immersed in the atmosphere of the place, a swell of iridescent, multicoloured smoke appears on the far-off horizon. It moves in their direction, coming with great force, always closer toward the commanding peak on which the children stand. If it were not for Omanisol Val and Pom-pom would surely flee, for the smoke, approaching closer, reveals itself to be a tornado, whirling with mighty power. She gives a maternal feeling of protection, a sort of mother-of-the-spirit, because it seems the state she is in could never be harmed by any outside force, being herself the essence of the rocky mountain…’ (pp.111-12).

The ‘immobility’ Omanisol symbolises is what the ancients sought to convey in the mythological Mt Meru, the ‘axis of the world’. Or what I have called the Stable Constant in relation to the Mother’s rendition of the new Axis – the Inner Chamber of her Temple.

On numerous occasions I have explained how the Mother’s original plan of the inner chamber provides us with all the keys of knowledge required to make the transition a conscious participation. The aspect of conscious participation, I have emphasised, is the essential feature, distinguishing the old species from the new. The chamber Val and Pom-pom enter is the Mother’s chamber, and it contains the same keys of knowledge. It is also their initiation into the experience of conscious participation, for in their meeting with the Time-Spirit, he asks them:

‘“Who  are you?’ the man asks.

‘”Val. Pom-pom,” they reply.

‘“I ask: who are you?” he insists.

‘”But we told you,” says Val.

‘”That is not your identity.”’ (p.110)

And then the Time-Spirit proceeds to reveal their ‘identity’ by consulting the Book of Life in which the destiny of each soul is written. With this knowledge of the truth of who they are, the children can then continue their journey and return to Earth to fulfil their mission.

Val and Pom-pom enter the chamber by a rise through the floor; similarly, we find in the Mother’s original plan of her Chamber that entrance was intended by her to be through the floor, by a rise (unlike the modified version in Auroville). And there is a ‘descent’ – the ladder with its numerous rungs representing gradations, levels of consciousness, planes. It permits the children to reach Omanisol’s mountaintop realm and is equivalent to the descending solar Ray in the Mother’s chamber (‘…the symbol of the future realisation…’). Likewise, the Chamber’s Ray permits the ascent to the immobile Omanisol in that it is the measure of the year, equally with its many ‘levels’ (of time), for the Rig Veda tells us that those realms or states of consciousness or planes are ‘opened’ to us by the months and the years. Using Time as an ally now – meaning the conscious participation in the evolutionary process – the passage of the year provides us with the FUEL and the FIELD for our Yoga, when we are able to make this passage CONSCIOUSLY on the backdrop of the Gnostic Circle.

The Core which ‘fills the void’ describes the new centre in the gnostic being, by virtue of which he or she can know immortal being. The Core is the inner mechanism of the superior species which will one day fully populate the Earth. The Globe is the new and luminous centre, while the four-cornered Pedestal is the new and perfect alignment which supports the newly unveiled Centre/Globe. Hence there is no collapse, no possibility of any caving in or seepage of energy. It is because of this Knowledge, so central to the new creation, that I sought fruitlessly for a number of years to have the alignment corrected in the Matrimandir in Auroville, not to speak of the hole in the centre of the room which stands as a superb symbol of the old ‘void’ into which energy collapses. A different and superior alignment is the only way for the new species to come into existence. This is the method to bring into being a CREATIVE manifestation and to emerge once and for all from the boundaries of the old world, founded on the principle of Destruction.

The ‘Power’ of Cult Figures or Objects of Devotion

In the old creation, in the binary system, the method for survival and continuity was actually usurpation of energy. The dark sun drew the energy to itself and ‘hoarded’ it. This was and is the secret of its power. Therefore in the old way devotion was necessary, or projection onto an external object of veneration.

     But the Mother understood the coming change and that her plan of the inner chamber represented a higher state. Hence, she commanded that there should be no photographs of herself and Sri Aurobindo in the room. On the other hand, all cult figures in the world thrive on this mechanism of usurpation, no doubt as an unconscious condition. For how can they know? To understand this mechanism is to become immediately an instrument for the great change, a position very few objects of worship are willing to assume. For the power in the Bhakta is drawn in to increase the object’s power. And this is ‘hoarded’, simply because it goes into the void ultimately; it is not used to INCREASE. This makes the cult figure truly powerful, and most are impressed with this power. But there is no means to extend that power through the system at crucial moments so as to prevent collapse – that is, decay, destruction, death. There are too many gaps in the old system. Indeed, to put it bluntly, there is no system at all, no ‘cosmos’, in the real sense of the word.

By consequence, a projection onto a symbol of worship was and is necessary in such a creation. But it has solved nothing permanently in our collapsing world. It has served simply to assuage the human being for a time.

These paths, cults, religions, could survive in the old creation for as long as the Time-Spirit allowed. That is, until the real and final collapse of the old world. This is happening now. The mechanism is clear, the process based on a negative intake into a void, as part of a binary system, continuously drained the system seeking to replenish its energy. The gaps – because the system had no complete fourfold foundation or base – permitted seepages. All our systems of energy generation reflect this situation. The environmental collapse reflects this: we deplete faster than what we replace; we pollute and destroy our atmosphere faster than we can repair it; we create poisons in greater quantities than we can effectively dispose of. A threshold is reached in this final ennead and then the collapse is total and irrevocable.

This means that the periphery of the system is drained of energy which is plunged into the void. There is no replenishing because of the binary structure. While there might be a light sun in the system, the dark sun balances it out and serves to limit the effect it might have. The energy in the periphery that goes to sustain the light sun (because this is the process in the old creation) is usurped by the dark Companion and then precipitated into the void.

As stated, in the youthful stages of a creation – human or otherwise – this process goes undetected because there is an exuberance of energy. There is a surplus. Hence there is no compulsion either to see the true process or to rectify it. It passes undetected. It is only in times like our own when critical thresholds are reached that we are compelled to look at the position we find ourselves in as a race and a civilisation and seek to understand. When a creation reaches maturity introspection becomes imperative. This denotes a coming of age.

In the evolution of consciousness on Earth we have reached such a threshold. People everywhere and in all fields are seeking to know how we can arrest the imminent collapse. But the problem is none know the mechanism. By consequence, they neither know what is truly responsible for the collapse nor the means to arrest it.

Everything undergoes a radical change in the new cosmos. There a central Sun stands alone in a unitary system. Thus there is no dark sun feeding off its binary companion. Depletion does not exist in the new cosmos. The mechanism is constantly CREATIVE, never destructive. The sole reason is that there is no void at the centre. There is an upholding POINT.

What this signifies is that the Centre does not need to draw energy from the system, from ITS BODY, to feed itself; as, for example, if the human being stops all intake of food the body consumes itself until it perishes. Rather, the Centre’s function is merely to uphold the play and to provide the divine and binding Purpose; while its immobile poise allows each thing to find its true place. (‘…Who are you? The Time-Spirit asks…’). The result is no gaps, no drain, no seepage. Nothing falls into the Void.

Thus, in such a creation one issue above all others assumes primary importance: each thing in its place. That is, ORDER, COSMOS.

The system contains an abundant supply of power to maintain itself. This power is ever present. It is the play of forces in the system which the Centre does not require for ‘food’, and then to experience collapse. The unitary system has a Sun that holds it together by an entirely different mechanism. Truly it is a new world that is born: it is self-supportive. It generates energy within itself and does not require any outer source; and by virtue of the formula – each thing in its place – those energies are rightly utilised to create, never to destroy. It has a CORE, and in that Core the process of fusion provides it with a limitless source and no poisonous wastes. But it is a core proper to each particle or element in the creation. Each individual member of such a society has a ‘core’, a perennially replenishing inner source.

The 4.5, or the ‘Hidden Manna’

To return to the Gnostic Circle’s formulation, the 4.5 Orbit depicted the goal of the mental species; and indeed it is the threshold to the third quarter of the wheel, the mental (Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius). This incompletion, this arresting of the movement of consciousness at the halfway mark with its consequent shattering and ultimate collapse, engendered poisonous wastes, similar to the fission process of energy generation. In other words, proceeding along these lines it is inevitable that we reach the critical threshold and those poisons overtake, overwhelm and finally destroy the creation which has provided the field for this inferior experience. In other words, it is in the process of energy generation that poisons and toxins come about. We must bear this in mind because, as I shall demonstrate, the 4.5 which now stands as an insatiable void, must be remade into our source of unending ‘fuel’.

Our civilisation reflects this destructive principle. The human race itself, with its decay and death and, above all, its atavism which lies at the root of the problem of overpopulation, is an expression of the inferior alignment and incompletion of the old creation. In overpopulation we see the same process: the act of procreation has become another tool of destruction. We see that a more conscious process must replace the present method of continuity of the species – failing which, overpopulation will lay waste all our attempts to improve the living conditions of this great mass of human beings.

On the environmental front we seek to educate society, explaining that to continue destroying our forests, polluting our seas and the water we drink and destroying the atmosphere in hitherto unimaginable ways spells the extinction of the human race. However, no amount of education seems to have any effect on the situation. The critical threshold is reached in this area, as in all others. All things are connected and do find their ultimate convergence in time. We wonder, therefore, if it will be possible to prevent the collapse we know lies just around time’s corner.

The point is, is there another possibility and sufficient time for it to overtake the movement of collapse? Is it possible for the human species to transcend its present ego-pivoted limitation and bring into being right now a higher species, truly centred?

The reason why passage through the 4.5 Orbit in the past engendered poisonous wastes which produced decay and ultimate death is that there was no Core in the species, as described in the Mother’s chamber. Therefore there was nothing to hold the consciousness-being together during the phase of acceleration, which is essential for the emergence of a higher species. Consciousness is speeded up; at the same time the material substance of our physical bodies is proportionately accelerated. On this basis regeneration is engendered and collapse is avoided. But without a core – or a centre in perfect alignment, or resulting from a perfect alignment – this process cannot be lived on the planet. Everything is too dense, too heavy, too slow. Inertia holds the movement in check to the point where when the threshold is reached time is swallowed up by various layers of our physical beings and the resultant gaps are the areas of collapse. For this reason I have written earlier that the web time weaves in our lives holds in its lines tremendous energy. It is this power which we must liberate so that it can be our fuel in the acceleration of consciousness-being. The Gnostic Circle is a map of this precious play of energy which is the birthright of every individual born on this planet. The Gnostic Circle explains the method for releasing that energy.

At this point in evolution we bear encumbrances which are the tools of Inertia to check our ‘speed’, to keep us within the boundaries of the human mental species. They impede us from living the experience of Whole Time, or the conscious passage through the final quarter of the Gnostic Circle, starting with the sign Capricorn. In The New Way, Volume 2, page 495, I have presented a fascinating diagram the Mother drew for a disciple: a circle divided into 9 parts which she indicated contained real occult power and knowledge. Apart from the fact that the 9 division of the Circle has been our major key of knowledge, the subtle details of her drawing explicitly confirm just what I am describing in these pages: at the 4.5 the true experience brings release of this tremendous Energy, the fuel for the acceleration which carries us to new frontiers.

I am presenting here a replica of the diagram. The shaded area is the 4.5 Orbit, and it stretches up to the 0/9 Point. Thus the Mother, in this simplest of fashions, disclosed or brought into the open what the Enneagram hinted at but left to the seeker to discover: that is, the true ‘gold’ lies in this area, but seen in connection to the apex of 0/9, just as the Mother has indicated. The question is, How do we release that energy?

In addition, as a further confirmation, the Mother gave colours to the 9 petals in the design. The circumscribing 8 were all silver; only the 4.5 area up to the apex was gold (the shaded area in the sketch). And in this way I have shown once again how the legacy the Mother left us by way of diagrams, plans, symbols, etc, indisputably confirms the knowledge of this New Way.

The world we know is a product of the limitations Inertia imposes. Therefore, no amount of education will arrest the destruction set in motion thousands of years ago. The only way to counteract the collapse of our planet and the extinction of the species is to introduce the higher one, by realignment of our consciousness-being so that a core comes into existence which can keep the consciousness centred and ‘held together’ during the acceleration time is producing.

This is the true nature of the critical threshold we face. The present human structure cannot sustain the influx, the increase of energies which the extended boundaries of our solar system is FORCING upon us. When those increases or influxes occur they serve to hasten the collapse rather than bring salvation by virtue of acceleration. At the same time, for those who bear the Core within, and for the new creation at whose heart there stands that Core/Centre, the increase, though initially hard to bear and negative in appearance, must serve the Core and fulfil its inherent divine Purpose.

The immobile Axis of the Capricorn realisation opens the way to the final quarter of the Circle. It is the area of the ‘extended boundaries’ of our consciousness-being, both individually and collectively, without which the Energy released at the 4.5 Orbit would have no enlarged field for its play. The cramped condition of our species’ structure is the reason why the release of the 4.5 does not produce acceleration but rather a turn back upon itself. It is as if in the forward thrust it were to meet an iron wall.

This helps us to understand why the collapse gains momentum when we come to the critical threshold of time: the increase – which is proportionate to the extension of the system’s boundaries – thrusts great quantities of ‘fuel’ into the system. But if the boundaries are not effectively extended that acceleration creates a tremendous impact. There is a heightening of calamitous happenings. Thus just before the new Dawn actually manifests there is perforce an appearance of a more intense darkening of the light. We have the impression not only that no new gains have been made but that we stand to lose the little from the past that we manage to carry over into the time of transition.

In The Magical Carousel and the sign-land Aquarius, following Capricorn, the two children experience the condition of civilisation in the time of transition. They are swept up from Omanisol’s mountain-top by a terrific force and thrust into the centre of what appears to be a huge tornado:

‘…Whipping around at tremendous speed, it forms a vast array of iridescent colours and vibrations creating the most beautiful musical sounds. And what is more, myriads of objects swirl around them on all sides, in fact, everything that goes to make up cities and civilisations: entire buildings, motor vehicles, everything down to the smallest objects. It looks as though the ferocious tornado had destroyed the entire land it passed through. From where has this force arisen and where is it taking them?’  (p.113)

Thereafter they are swept down with all the debris into a huge container, and there they come into contact with the consciousness of a dying world:

‘…A very frightening noise and uproar begins, making the whole vat resound and almost shattering them by the vibrations that penetrate their little bodies. It appears to come from all the ruins of the buildings, houses, etc., that inhabit the container along with them. Soon it develops into a whining, pitiful drone and then the children understand they are listening to the anguished cries of all humanity that had been swept away by the destructive current.

‘What can they do? How can they help these people? And in fact, where are they – for no one can be seen?…’       (p.115)

And the tale continues with the description of the way in which Val and Pom-pom are passed through an ‘accelerator’ and then sent on their way to fulfil their Earthly mission, while the Water Carrier chants through the cosmos…

‘Flow, waters of the spirit,
flow through the ether to our brothers of the universe,
awaken the hearts of mankind, for the

NEW ERA has dawned!’

     ‘It is something we are searching for. Perhaps not merely searching for, but building.

     ‘We are being used so that we may participate in the manifestation of that which is as yet inconceivable for everyone, because it is not yet there. It is an expression that is yet to come…’

The Mother

Extracts from talk,

24 May, 1962

The following text is unusual in the extreme. Most who read this Introduction will find in it nothing to which it can be related. It is certainly far removed from what we commonly recognise as spiritual; on the other hand, portions of the material have a distinct scientific flavour – yet it is decidedly not science. True to her visionary capacity, the Mother fulfilled her own prophecy of the emergence of a ‘third thing’ beyond both spirituality and science. What makes the faculty or capacity the Mother foresaw so difficult to grasp initially is because in order to enter the world she envisioned it is only necessary to see what IS. But that act of Seeing must be founded on that ‘third thing’ the Mother was ‘building’.

‘…[T]hese positions, the spiritual and the “materialist”, if one may call it so, that are believed to be exclusive…are insufficient, not only because they do not admit each other, but because even admitting the two and uniting the two does not suffice to solve the problem. There is something else – a third thing which is not the result of these two, but something that is to be discovered, which will probably open the door to the total Knowledge.

      ‘…And as for saying what it is, the other one, the true position? It is so much beyond all intellectual states that I am unable to formulate it.

      ‘But the formula will come, I know. But it will come in a series of lived experiences that I have not had yet.’ (Ibid)

The genesis of the Mother’s contribution to the world of sacred geometry and architecture plays a fundamental role in the history of the Supramental Manifestation. It is unlikely that a similar development had occurred earlier because this is the 9^th Manifestation and it is therefore the culmination of nearly 30,000 years of evolutionary progression; during this long period, circumstances evolved to make her feat possible in this particular Age. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that ours is the period when Vishnu’s 9^th Avatar appears to imprint the supramental Truth-Consciousness in the evolutionary matrix. Therefore, the Mother’s contribution in her specialised field would necessarily be unlike anything that the world of the sacred sciences had known until her coming, considering that it was born in this special epoch and conditioned by the new faculty above Mind, the Supermind; there is no comparable example in the field of the sacred sciences available to us, past or present. In fact, the only known example that could in any way be connected to her contribution would be the ancient Vedic Altar of pure geometric symbolism. The Mother was in fact the incarnate Divine Maya extolled in the Veda, she who introduces measure and form to shape the undifferentiated consciousness-essence of the Transcendent.

            We take up the story of this unique occurrence after one of the more remarkable experiences of the Mother’s yogic life; this occurred on 12 April 1962. Thereafter the Mother entered a new phase in her Yoga which required her almost complete withdrawal from outer activities. In this arrangement she would appear before her disciples and devotees on four days during the year; for the rest, she met with others only in her room. In this semi-withdrawal the Mother was intensely engaged in establishing a new expanded field of Yoga. The Ashram that she and Sri Aurobindo created in Pondicherry was the home of the first stage of their joint endeavour, where the broad lines of the Integral Yoga were laid down. The disciples who joined them in that enterprise served as representative agents required in the ‘field’ for the ends of the Integral Yoga to be met.

            A monumental threshold was crossed with the Supramental Manifestation of 1956. Therefore a new field was demanded to accommodate the increase of energies required in a supramental, as distinct from an integral process. Thus the City-Consciousness was born as the new enhanced ‘field’ adequate to house a Supramental Yoga. It was then that the sacred sciences were to play a central role, for which the Mother was admirably suited.

            Thereafter again a number of representative elements were gathered with whom the lines of the enhanced process could be worked out. But to accompany an experiment of this unusual order a certain foundational knowledge had to be formulated that would serve as the subtle but indestructible support for the City-Consciousness. Thus, throughout her withdrawal in the 1960s, the Mother laid the solid foundations of that special City-Consciousness by bringing into being certain keys of higher knowledge that would serve as ‘tools’ for the construction of this City. The final result of her labour was an entirely new body of knowledge that would be a ‘third thing’, the appearance of which she had announced shortly after her April 1962 breakthrough. These keys would open the doors to a formulation beyond both science and spirituality, just as she had foreseen.

            The Mother began the actual construction of the City-Consciousness in the second half of the 1960s; but the most important happening in her Yoga at the time occurred in the first days of January of 1970 when she ‘saw’ the heart and soul of the City. That feat marked the close of the former decade and opened a new one – during which time certain keys of Gnosis would come to play a fundamental role in deciphering her vision. She announced then that she ‘had seen the centre: it took the form of a chamber. All its details were duly recorded by the Mother because after having entered the solar world and ‘seen’ the chamber, she had an architectural plan drawn up whereby she completed her task as Divine Maya – that is, she gave measure and form to the undifferentiated essence of the Transcendent. By this act she completed the process of densification of the Vision from the subtle plane or the solar world known to the Rishis of old, to the more material. In a word, she gave factual proof of her Vedic credentials by this superior act of measuring. But this time, with the manifestation of the Truth-Consciousness, the experience that had been reserved for a few could become universalised. Indeed, this is precisely why a new ‘field’ for the Yoga was required so that the adequate quantity of energies could be embraced to achieve this universalisation. To better clarify, the Mother created a bridge between subtle and physical by virtue of measure, the Measure Divine, which only she could do as the incarnate Divine Maya to allow for a process of densification of this special order. In other words, to bring about the descent of a sacred form, pristine and uncontaminated, from the plane of the Truth-Consciousness to serve as a womb of the Gnostic Supermind.

            But this was only part of the endeavour; or, we could say, only half of the Bridge. The remainder required an action from below, drawing in the vital and physical planes on the basis of those precious keys of Gnosis to complete the linkage via an entire body of supramental knowledge as the foundation upon which the City-Consciousness could arise.

            To be noted before all else is that in a supramental process first the gnostic ‘mortar’ comes into being – that is, the tools of Knowledge that can densify the essence-substance of the City – but in the dimension of consciousness, it must be emphasised. The outcome of the endeavour hinges on the successful cementing of this special foundation. To be more precise, during the years of their joint yoga, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were grappling with the world-consciousness as it was at the time of their labour. That is, they laboured within the confines of the serious limitations of the Old Creation. The central focus of that first stage was the rigorous tapasya to change the direction spirituality had assumed at the close of the Vedic Age. The direction or the goal of each quest, accepted by all branches of spirituality (and later by all religions born in the Age of Pisces) was, in a word, otherworldly. This was fortified by the indisputably high quality of the realisations of numerous Yogis during the Age of Pisces (234 BCE to 1926 CE), to the point where no other possibility was entertained by new realisers. All followed the path laid down from approximately the time of Gautam the Buddha (500 BCE) through to our present era.

Sri Aurobindo took birth as the 9^th Avatar of Lord Vishnu to set in motion a correction of that trend which had been so thoroughly cemented by the time he entered the Earth plane. But to bring any effective shift away from focus on the Beyond, he needed the collaboration of the Mother insofar as the need of the times was to re-establish a connection with the Vedic Age. Hence, the Divine Maya’s collaboration as a partner of equal capacity though serving a different function, was the call of the hour.

Thus, both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo laboured in the mire of an old and dying consciousness to reverse the direction so that all further spiritual endeavours could be Earth oriented. Using the apt metaphor of a physical construction, their labour must be viewed as one of digging trenches in the soil of the ages gone by, wherein new foundation stones of the supramental Truth-Consciousness could be placed. To be specific, if it is to be a new City-Consciousness, then we must start the construction from those very trenches where the stones are to be placed. In the true Vedic tradition this means that measure enters the scheme of things, never more to leave. Those trenches were dug in a dimension newly opened and accessible from this Earth plane after the Supramental Manifestation of 1956. That monumental event allowed access to the solar world which had been closed to Earth since the Vedic Age came to an end. The edifice built through this yogic process would be entirely different, therefore requiring trenches of specific measurements that could penetrate hitherto inaccessible dimensions.

Time holds the key to this superlative Act of Measuring. The new channels dug out by the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother allowed for Time to crystallise the tools with which the foundation stones of the City-Consciousness would come into being. Thus, the entire experience is one of Gnosis – the heart and soul of a true new creation whose field is the City-Consciousness from where the elements of the Supramental Yoga are to manifest.

     The first laboratory was the Sri Aurobindo Ashram where numerous representative energies from all the different parts of India could be gathered, in a sense bringing into that field a confluence of individuals who would stand as ‘symbols’ of the otherworldly direction the old yogas had assumed and for which a correction would be required. They represented the spirituality that had engulfed the entire civilisation. It was an endeavour in consciousness, as yet a step removed from the vital-physical dimension. The first field was limited in its scope to this particular function, without which nothing beyond could take place, and certainly nothing of the newly-manifested Supermind. The revealing ingredient that identifies it as a labour limited to consciousness is seen in the fact that the Ashram became settled not in a virgin field but within the already established city of Pondicherry. A superior ‘construction process’ played no role in the first laboratory, but that field did allow for an integral re-moulding of consciousness.

Initially a physical locale was not required. However, after the Supramental Manifestation of 1956 and as a result of the Yoga the Mother undertook in the 1960s, the new field would be required for the purpose of rooting the Truth-Consciousness in this physical Earth plane. As a representative model of the New Creation the extended field would demand that Measure be paramount from the outset. A physical construction process would play a prominent role in the enhanced field – a circumstance that was never a part of the first. The trenches dug there – in the dimension of consciousness – were made ready to receive the foundation stones of Gnosis – the building-blocks of the new City-Consciousness. The first step in this newly-manifested process, never before undertaken, was to begin ‘construction’ once the trenches (products of the first field) were filled with carefully crafted tools of knowledge. At the centre of the circumscribing circle were representative energies from the world as it was in the 1960s. That centre/womb was seen by the Mother in the very first days of 1970. But that was only the first half of the Bridge; the remaining portion, which would conclusively connect it to this Earth plane, would be the body of Gnosis that was contained in the Mother’s vision and architectural plan but which required an elaboration that only Time could provide. This was the Mother’s legacy, her final gift to a humanity harbouring a deep and abiding aspiration to reach heights beyond the confinements of the present mental cage.

The physical construction of the Mother’s temple was needed to consolidate the Knowledge. In that act of building the second half of the Bridge came into being and was rendered indestructible by processes of the Supramental Yoga.  The Mother’s vision and plan of the Inner Chamber were ‘constructed’ on the foundational channels provided by the Yoga of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in the first field of the old creation, which resulted in the newly-opened dimensions of the City-Consciousness from 1950 onwards. Without the actual physical labour, nothing of that superior Gnosis would have come into the Earth atmosphere to alter forever the evolutionary process.

In the first field the yoga was limited to the four levels of consciousness-being but through the channels of the higher hemisphere. After the Supramental Manifestation, once the direction had been successfully reoriented toward the Earth, a densification began to render ‘the symbol the very thing symbolised’. That is when the lower hemisphere of the Vital and Physical assumes prominence. By this integrality we pass into the realm of Supermind.

The City and Temple were the fields in the physical demanded by the extension to the Supramental Yoga where the direction is reversed to Earth from the Beyond. Its purpose was to allow the gnostic tools to ‘construct’ the Chamber (in the 1980s), pari passu with the actual building work. Therefore it is said that the constructed chamber in cement and steel is a shadow of the Mother’s original simply because hers is ‘constructed’ only with the Light of Gnosis, which is entirely lacking in the physical building presently standing in Auroville. Without that Light there is no ‘bridge’ to forge a connection between this Earth plane and the Solar World. The immortal, indestructible element is that foundational Supramental Gnosis

At this level of the manifestation the location of the second field assumes prominence. It cannot follow the same pattern as the first field because of the proximity to the physical. The first half of the Bridge covered the upper regions; the next portion comes down and touches the physical, passing first through the vital where the ‘symbol’ begins densification to become ‘the thing symbolised’. While not exactly a virgin field, it allows for the representative work to be carried out.  But to be noted is that the actual ‘construction’ of the Gnostic Chamber was carried out in the Third Field, the truly virgin land of impeccable space-time/latitude-longitude coordinates indispensable for a true centre to emerge. Each field was born of the particular number-power that would complete the sacred Formula enshrined in Sri Aurobindo’s lotus-symbol: 9/6/3. The first field partook of his number-power 9 (1926=9); the second of the Mother’s 6 (1968=6), and the last was the 3 (1983=3) to complete the formula the Mother anticipated of that ‘third thing’.

One of the principal characteristics of the New Creation is the control anyone involved in its workings soon comes to realise. This 9^th Manifestation is when finally Siva as Mahakala takes birth, the 9^th of Vishnu’s Line; and while we may ignore his controlling power in our daily life, in the fields of Yoga arranged for the descent this control is evident to all who collaborate in the coming at close hand. This is nothing new or perceivable only by those participants in the Third Field. Disciples of Sri Aurobindo in his Ashram know of his obsession with Time. They were aware of the pattern his life itself drew involving the number 12. These patterns in the combined lives of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were unmistakable; for instance, the measure of 6 between the days/months/years of their births was even carried over to the hours and minutes of their respective passings, silencing any who might have doubted their sacred eternal bond.

            In this light, the state of decline in evidence in the first two fields causes one to wonder, ‘Where is that Control? Have we been forsaken by the Great God of Time when his power is most needed? Are we no longer his instruments in this monumental age of transition? Is their labour to remain incomplete, unfulfilled – and worse, in a state of chaos? Is this the finality of so high a mission?’

            The answer lies simply in the acquisition of a new poise of consciousness whereby we are able to re-focus the Lens of Seeing so that the required clarity comes. But it is not one single re-focussing act that ‘makes all things new’. Time regulates even our breakthroughs: we see as much as the Great God allows at any given moment. This is an evolutionary working. It moves along an organic line of development; or, better said, it moves in the form of concentric circles, from outer to inner. As Time fertilises the soil of our consciousness through practice of the Integral and Supramental Yogas, veils are removed, we are allowed access to deeper levels of the Supramental Gnosis until finally the entire act of Becoming is integrated and made an equal and simultaneous partner of Being. We stand at the threshold of Swar, the solar world, to which we gain access through the Mother’s gnostic chamber when we use the sacred Keys she bequeathed.

            In this finer light there is no aberration, no failure, no unaccounted for blow with the ability to inflict serious damage. We see that in all the three fields each thing is in its place. The full Gnosis required the physical construction, defiant and aberrant as it appears in the higher vision, without which the gnostic content of the chamber could not have been brought down from the solar world into this Earth plane. In a word, the construction of the second half of the Bridge could not have occurred without the physical involvement of the instruments destiny provided for that part of the process. It too required the gestating capacity of Time. This undeniable fact reaffirms the main aphorism of the Third Field: Positive AND negative serve the purposes of the One. The physical construction set the pace and served as a goading factor that inspired the descent of a Knowledge unknown to the world.

There was no aberration as such – but there was a choice, an act of choosing. The participant could choose to be a part of either side, positive and in the light, or negative and in the darkness, deprived of the luminous beacon as guide on the way. One could choose the way of the physical and align oneself with that labour; or one could align oneself with the Light and be armed with the certitude that the forward march of Time would ineluctably lead to harmony and not to chaos. Out of that golden supramental Seed the Mother planted in early 1970, only the most sublime harmony could evolve. Those who had the perseverance to cling to the certitude of Victory reap the benefits at this culminating moment when everything is seen and known to make sense.

The Vedic Altar had a similar purpose – that is, to connect this Earthly plane to the solar world, to Swar of the Veda. And similar to the Mother’s updated version, Time was the building mortar as central to the Vedic model as it is to the Mother’s. She explained the function and purpose of the Inner Chamber in no uncertain terms when she stated that its ‘twelve walls are the months of the year’. The Rig Veda gives precise details of the Journey, as it was called by the Rishis, through those very same twelve months. They explained that the most difficult and dangerous stage of the initiation would be the passage from 9 to 10 – i.e., the 9^th through to the 10^th month where the victory of the Aryan Warrior was to be achieved. Similarly, in Savitri the same danger is encountered when in the 9^th Book of the Epic, Death warns the Goddess not to follow him as he carries off the soul of Satyavan into the realm wherefrom mortals cannot return. She follows nonetheless, and, as in the Vedic Journey, the Goddess completes the supremely difficult passage of 9 to 10. In the 10^th Book/Month she conquers Death. The twelve walls of the Chamber are those very months as indicated so clearly by the Mother and the Veda.

Sri Aurobindo carried out the same immensely dangerous process, when in 1950 he left his body, fashioned as it had been to labour within the confines of the Old Creation – and, as he wrote in A God’s Labour to describe his return from the abyss, ‘He who I am was with me still’. He returned this time as a part of the New Creation, as the Immanent One of his former Transcendence, the minute and precise details of which were recorded in the measurements of the Inner Chamber by the Mother – a feat never before achieved, thus earning the qualification of being the first cultural expression of the supramental Truth-Consciousness. This was not just geometry, even of the sacred variety. The Mother laid the foundations through very precise measurements of the entirely new Geometry of Time.

‘In other words, it is when the nine-months’ sacrifice is prolonged through the tenth, it is when the Navagwas become the ten Dashagwas by the seven-headed thought of Ayasya, the tenth Rishi, that the Sun is found… but what is meant by the figure of the months? For it now becomes clear that it is a figure, a parable; the year is symbolic, the months are symbolic. It is in the revolution of the year that the recovery of the lost Sun and the lost cows is effected, for we have the explicit statement in X.62-2… “by the truth, in the revolution of the year, they broke Vala”…’

‘The expression in the hymns, daso maso ataran, indicates that there was some difficulty in getting through the full period of ten months. It is during this period apparently that the sons of darkness had the power to assail the sacrifice; for it is indicated that it is only by the confirming of the thought which conquers Swar, the solar world, that the Rishis are able to get through the ten months…’ (Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda.)

‘I hold for you in the waters the thought that wins possession of Swar by which the Navagwas [nine] passed through the ten months…’ (V.45-11)

On the heels of Vishnu’s 9^th appearance and in an unbroken line of Time, Sri Aurobindo’s prophecy was fulfilled: the 10^th indeed comes ‘to rectify the error of the Buddha’, to finally and conclusively cement the reversed direction to the Earth and no longer to the Beyond when the formula is fulfilled and the 9 becomes the 10.

Thea

Skambha

13.8.2013