The Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission touched the surface of the southern pole of the Moon on 23 August at 6:03 pm and successfully landed at 6:04 pm. Several days later, Prime Minister Modi announced that the site where the Vikram lander touched down will be known as Shiv Shakti Point: “The humanitarian resolve is integral to the concept of Shiva, and it is from Shakti that we get the ability to fulfil that resolve. The ‘Shakti’ in the name ‘Shiv Shakti’ comes from the hard work, inspiration and empowerment of the women scientists.”
It is well known in India that Shiv Shakti is one of the three energy forces present in our universe. These qualities correspond to the Hindu trinity of Creation, Preservation and Dissolution/Destruction: Brahman Shakti is the force of creating, Vishnu Shakti the force of preserving and maintaining, and Shiv Shakti is the force associated with dissolution and/or destruction, paving the way for transformation.
In Western parts of our world there is little or no insight into the true purpose or meaning of Shiv Shakti. In Eastern tradition over the years and within various philosophies, there has arisen a misunderstanding about Shiv Shakti. The order of the Gunas became deformed, with India exalting the Sattwic guna over Rajas and Tamas.
A recently published book, Partition of India, – its cause, its purpose, written in 2009 by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea) demonstrates this fact. Over a period of time, as the Sattwa Guna displaced the other two, India lost the capacity to deal with numerous trials and onslaughts. Thea states that the actual physical dismembering of the nation’s body at the time of Partition in 1947 could occur only because of ‘atrophy through disuse of her limbs’(p. 97).
‘Arms have been severed from the multi-limbed Goddess. How then can she guide her own children and the world successfully through these tumultuous times without those indispensable limbs and body whole and complete?’(ibid, p 110).
How did this happen?
The first sign of trouble, Thea explains, was the disarrangement in the sequence of the Gunas; they must be connected to the cosmic harmonies of our Earth: Creation (rajas), Preservation (sattwa) and Dissolution/Destruction (tamas). When any one is exalted above the other, or eliminated from the harmony of the threefold structure the result is collapse; they cannot stand alone in the cosmic structure.
‘Dismembering’ was a slow and steady process over many years as spirituality on the subcontinent fell under the influence of ‘reformist systems’ such as Buddhism. By the 9th Manifestation (234 BCE) the Earth-centered culture of the Vedic Age became so undermined that it gave way to the what Thea calls ‘otherworldliness’ – or the lure of the Beyond.
This undermining became further consolidated with Al Biruni’s recommendations about the Calendar. Up to the 12th century AD, historic records indicate that the true Vedic Calendar was still in use; thereafter with the split between the spiritual and the scientific, the constellational zodiac, based on the precession of our Earth, was used for calendar and Temple timings rather than the Earth’s own measure, the tropical zodiac. Most people lost sight of the true function of the Calendar as the binding force of the culture (see Part Nine for full details), thus allowing the India’s national holiday, the Makar Sankranti, to be disconnected from the true entry into Capricorn and celebrated 23 days late.
Thea wrote Partition of India – its cause, its purpose in a series of nine essays in 2009. The Indian nation was stirring at that time but many steps had yet to be taken before the Ram Temple movement was ignited. And the abrogation of Article 370 regarding the statehood of Kashmir was nowhere in sight. The universal Saka Calendar had been adopted shortly after Partition, but the nation as a whole did not honor it.
This led Thea to summarise the state of national affairs in this way:
‘…If we wish to comprehend India’s infirmaties… her almost complete paralysis in the fact of that bombastic rajastic force hurled at her time and again, we have to lay the blame at the feet of the Yogis who came at the close of the Vedic age and inculcated securely the notion of Escape. Thus Sattva was per force extolled above all others, and then came to displace its companions in the threefold harmony. The result of this spiritual misstep is exactly what we have today: an India of only Sattva, both in the dimensions of its evolving collective consciousness as well as its physical contours. She has no one else to blame for this sorry state of affairs but her own ‘wisemen’ who, in the words of the poet, ‘shall talk and sleep’ as God grows up… (Savitri, Sri Aurobindo: ‘God shall grow up while the wisemen talk and sleep.’) (ibid 110)
It is a joy to see the PM’s naming of the 2023 Lunar landing site as the Shiv Shakti Point; to hear his words to the nation, ‘it is the dawn of a new era’. I see it as a symbol that the Supramental is active and working on our Earth. Time and again, the special ‘cosmic note’ which our Earth/Moon adds to the harmony of the Solar System has been misunderstood and/or rejected.
As Thea explains, it is the particular relationship between the Sun and the Earth and her Moon that is unique here on the third planet in this System. It is only evolution on Earth that gives rise to a conscious experience in humankind; and it is here, on our Earth, that the gnostic society will evolve from the mental race to that of the Supramental Divine. Earth is the ‘soul’ of our Solar System, that is her special contribution – to deny her the possibility of fulfilling her destiny is to ‘condemn the planet to extinction…’ (The New Way, Volume 1, Ch. 5, p. 70).
With the spirit of the new Aquarian Age (1926), an unveiling process has begun: the extraordinary yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (of Pondicherry) resulted in the descent of the Supramental Force on Earth: ‘ a new world is being born’ the Mother told her disciples on 29 February 1956. Now, it is time for the rise of a collectivity to see that new soul/spirit working on Earth; to participate in the yoga of the third and fourth in ‘the Solar Line’, working behind the scenes to assist our planet to achieve her true destiny, to manifest that collective soul. We can take the timing of the Lunar Landing at 6:03 and 6:04 pm as an affirmation of that fact. About the new world that is being born, Thea assures:
The reality of a higher light is manifesting on Earth – a creation that exists in the subtle plane of Truth, that is already, and that only asks to be allowed to take shape in this world of ours… ‘ There is no pressure exerted from outside… Shakti’s method today is to allow for the very light at the root of the deepest darkness to awaken and come forth, and from within it must influence and finally cause the collapse of the outer veils that hide the seed of light…All is the Divine (action) … to give shape to the Ideal in the material world that will be the cell of a new Earth.’ (The New Way 1, p. 30 – 31).
There must be one nation on Earth who is prepared by destiny to guide this ‘new world/new birth’ on its way. India is that ‘womb of the Earth’, the soil on which the growth of the collective soul/cell can develop, writes Thea (The New Way 1, p. 76). It is only India among all nations on our Earth who has not disrupted her lineage; she has been preparing for this time and this difficult task. There is risk of succumbing to those same forces which eliminated portions of her body at the time of partition, to those forces that have destroyed all ancient cultures which pose a threat to their hopes of world domination. And so, Thea cautions, as India takes her place according to her destiny, she will need her ‘holding power’, her inbuilt mechanism for renewal, the Sanatan Dharma (see Reference 4).
Any displacement of the Gunas undermines the advance of Bharat Mata to occupy the centrestage in global affairs (Partition of India, p. 127). The ‘blanket’ covering our tamasic energies must be fully lifted and the rectification and correct understanding of the Gunas must take place. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s naming of the Shiv Shakti Point is the latest in a series of actions that give us hope that this process is on its way.
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References:
1.Shiv Shakti pointis the name given by India to the landing site of the Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander, which touched down about 600 km away from the South pole of the Moon on 23 August 2023. The site was named on 26 August 2023 at the ISTRAC headquarters in Bengaluru after India became the first country to make a successful soft landing on the South Pole of Moon and fourth country to make a successful soft landing on the surface of Moon. The point is located on the coordinates 373°S 32.319°E[5][6] and lies between Manzinus C and Simpelius N craters. (Wikipedia)
2. ‘For a deeper understanding, students can turn to the cosmology found in Thea’s The New Way. In her opening chapter on The Old Earth (volume 1), she explains that the forward march in consciousness has taken place during our historic times by the aid of the ‘process of destruction’. Humanity prefers more peaceful aspects of development, and most of its energies are ‘sleeping’, leading to an imbalance in the Gunas that threatens the planet’s trifold evolutionary rhythm of creation, preservation and dissolution:
‘When there is a disturbance of the balance… a means of rectification is required and destruction serves this purpose… It is a means to bring a shock into the Earth consciousness that will awaken the part that sleeps – and while it is totally awake, for that brief span, a progress is achieved… for this reason we find that some of the best qualities of a race come forward during such crises, because it is often only at those times that a nation’s full being is awakened. Our history is a continuous record of the ‘heroism of destruction’ (p. 21).
3. The new world being born – ‘the cell of a new Earth’ – cannot be built on the old creation, so Mother Nature works in subtle ways to bring about a quick death of the old Earth. Thea explains:
‘For as long as our earth is asleep, ignorant of her inner soul potentialities and unable to cooperate with Mother Nature, the evolution of consciousness does not occur by a natural process of undoing or ‘dissolution’. Rather she must ruthlessly make use of the process of ‘destruction’. She makes use of ‘large scale wars’ and/or other acts of violence to advance her evolutionary goals because during these spans of time, humanity awakens from its sleep and nature makes use of those energies for a certain progress and expansion’. (ibid, p. 24).
4. As this essay is being written, we receive the following headline news:
’ Udhayanidhi Stalin, a DMK minister, this weekend likened Sanatana Dharma to malaria and dengue, advocating for its eradication. This isn’t just an attack on a belief system—it’s an attack on India’s culture. (Swarajya, 3 September, 2023).
‘In a bid to press its claims over the un-demarcated borders with India, China is busy settling up “border settlements villages” in many sensitive areas of the Line of Actual Control (LAC)…the number of such settlements is estimated at 630 villages in the Tibetan Autonomous Region…’. (The New Indian Express, 28 August, 2023)