In early January of 1970, the Mother, Sri Aurobindo’s co-worker, had a vision that changed forever the conceptual nature and relevance of the sacred in geometry and architecture. Nothing like it had ever occurred; nor is it likely to recur. This was more than just a vision – phenomenal occultist that she was, the Mother had the ability to navigate through many dimensions, from the most dense to the most ethereal. On that momentous occasion she moved into what is known from the very ancient Vedic Age in India as the Solar World, Swar in the Rig Veda. What she ‘saw’ there was a ‘hidden chamber closed and mute’, as described by Sri Aurobindo in his epic poem Savitri, Book 1, Canto 5:
The body’s rules bound not the spirit’s powers;
When life had stopped its beats, death broke not in;
He dared to live when breath and thought were still.
Thus could he step into that magic place
Which few can even glimpse with hurried glance
Lifted for a moment from mind’s labored works
And the poverty of Nature’s earthly sight.
All that the Gods have learned is there self-known,
There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
And there the tables of the sacred Law,
There is the book of Being’s index page,
The text and glossary of the Vedic truth
Are there; the rhythms and metres of the stars
Significant of the movements of our fate:
The symbol powers of number and of form,
And the sacred code of the history of the world
And Nature’s correspondence with the soul
Are written in the mystic heart of life.
The Mother’s feat did not end merely with a vision of the chamber. The truly astonishing part came when she called in the Ashram engineer, Udar Pinto, and drew up a minutely detailed floor plan to explain to the architect exactly what had to be built, respecting above all the measurements and the precise arrangements for a ray of the Sun to enter the chamber at all times of the day. To achieve this exactitude she requested the services of an engineer rather than an architect for the sake of the precision required.
It was the Mother’s act of measuring that linked the vision to the most ancient Vedic Age and placed it not only on a par with certain extant structures that indicate the presence of a now-lost knowledge such as the Great Pyramid at Giza, but far above them in that she brought to the Earth what is known as the Divine Measure. She accomplished what St John had prophesied in Revelation as the ‘golden reed’, Chapter XXI-15:
And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.
Thus was born the Geometry of Time that is the foundation-stone of the new cosmology. The Golden Reed is the measurement of the descending solar ray falling into the translucent Globe and Pedestal of the core of the chamber. With its precisely-given measure of 15.20m, the symbol of the future realisation became ‘materialised’ – or better, the tool that makes the supramental Gnosis applicable for Earth use became operable.
One would logically have expected her vision and plan to have been received with great joy by her entourage, with the highest respect and appreciation for what she herself described as ‘the symbol of the realisation of the future’. Lamentably this was not the case. Nonetheless, it is providential that the disciple charged with conveying to the architect the description of her vision had taped those discussions that covered 18 days, from 31.12.1969 to 17.1.1970. What they reveal is a determined attempt by her entourage to alter every single item and never accept the plan from her hands, following her repeated order to ‘make no changes’. The tapes also reveal that since the Mother was then 90 years old she had difficulty speaking; this seems to have emboldened her entourage to take advantage of the situation.
Changes were indeed made while she was present on Earth. New plans were drawn up which the chief architect insists she ‘blessed’, thereby giving her approval. What the taped discussions reveal is something quite different: she had no choice. Thus, she closed the issue of the implementation of her plan on 17.1.1970, with these words: ‘But you know, I do not believe in external decisions. I believe simply in one thing: the force of the Consciousness that makes PRESSURE like this [gesture of pressing from above] and the pressure is increasing…which means that it will sort out the people…I believe only in that: the pressure of the Consciousness. All the rest, they are things men do; they do it more or less well, then it lives, and then it dies, and then it changes, and then it becomes deformed, and then… – everything that they have done. It is not worth it. The power of execution must come from above, like that, imperative.’ (17.1.1970)
The result is that the ‘soul’ of the new creation she saw and measured in the solar world was never built. It became not a chamber in the Divine’s image but rather in man’s, reproducing most accurately in its symbolism man as he stands today, with the ego central and not the soul – much less the soul of the Supramental Creation of her vision: in her words, ‘the things men do’. That this Shadow Temple came into being as it has, perfectly reproducing in geometric symbols the ego structure of the human being, in itself is a remarkable demonstration of one of Supermind’s prime demands: to put each thing in its rightful place.
We accept that. We accept that the builders and the community wilfully chose to build the architect’s version and not the Mother’s original before anything had been built, and that they have the right to choose in this Age of Aquarius. However, what is unacceptable is that the structure was publicised thereafter as the ‘the Mother’s original’. When this came to light it was the signal that an immediate intervention was required. In the years that followed this took the form of the Matrimandir Action Committee (MAC); the details of that particular campaign can be accessed at www.matacom.com.
Already by mid-1975 the building coming up at the centre of the township was lost to higher knowledge forever. It could only serve to expose the actual condition of the human species – a shadow of the light – and nothing more. But the question to ask is why, after deliberately choosing to construct the architect’s plan and not the Mother’s, before anything had been built, (see www.matacom.com for factual evidence), was it necessary to hide this from the public for years by fair or foul means. The answer is that the tradition of sacred architecture is alive and well in India, and the vision of the Seer is sacrosanct in these matters; therefore it could never be made known to the Mother’s devotees and the public throughout the world that what was actually being built was not her original. Indians, true to their ancient culture of respect for a Sage’s vision, would never have donated funds for the project, knowing the facts of the case.
On my part the real issue was not one of funds, and the like. It was that the Shadow could not be handed down to posterity as the Mother’s vision. And this was what their agenda seemed to be – or at least this was the result. Even as late as 2013, in spite of our persistent campaign to expose the truth, visitors from the Ashram to Aeon Centre of Cosmology informed us that they were regularly conducting tours to the Matrimandir and presenting to the visitors what stands there as ‘the Mother’s original’. In my view there can be no more grievous transgression than to distort the truth in full awareness in such an unforgivable manner. I repeat, the transgression is not necessarily that of having chosen to discard her vision; it is the misrepresentation that followed and lasted for many years. Ample evidence is provided on MAC’s website, as well as in the second volume of my autobiographical study, The Tenth Day of Victory (Aeon Books).
The chamber saga did not end there, with the misrepresentation of the Mother’s vision in the Shadow Temple. The attempts to suppress awareness of the fact that she had such a vision were continuous, from 1970 to the present; we have documented evidence to prove that the powers-that-be who rule over Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s legacy will not allow this information to leak out – and when it does, as in 2013, the tactic remains, as always, to discredit. In fact, this saga makes the Dan Brown thrillers pale in comparison; the difference is that this is a real-life documented conspiracy and not fiction. At this point, after 45 years have passed since her original breakthrough, there is ample evidence to suggest that like the author conveyed in his best-selling novel, what has been under attack from the outset is nothing less than the reinstatement of the Sacred Feminine.
To appreciate the fullest implications it is necessary to understand why the Mother’s vision and act of measuring were so important in the long labour to regain what was decimated during the Age of Pisces. During those 2000 years prior to our times, Goddess worship throughout the world was decimated. For Europe the final blow came in 396 CE with the closure of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the rise to supremacy of Christianity. Until that time the sacred symbol of the faith was different than what we know today. It was the Ichthyus, or Fish symbol, in keeping with the movement of the Ages into Pisces, the Fish of the zodiac. About the time the Goddess was smothered under a blanket of darkness, the Cross displaced the earlier symbol; its supremacy continues until today.
Scholars and even occultists, or what Dan Brown calls symbologists, in my view have not understood that this displacement by the off-centred Cross is a precise revelation of the calamities we face today in all areas of life, even down to the constant rape of the Earth by a humanity that has lost touch with the Feminine. We are playing out the rape of Persephone, the Divine Demeter’s daughter and the central figure of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Damocles Sword that hangs over our heads, threatening by one form or another a complete destruction of the human species and the planet we inhabit, is rendered perfectly clear if we delve deeply into the true meaning of the symbolism of the crucified Son. Even more telling with regard to the Sacred Feminine is his resurrection to join his Father in heaven; certainly not on Earth, or to bring about the New Heaven and the New Earth prophesied in Revelation. I quote from my Explorations into the Leonardo Mysteries(2005, Aeon Books), a scholar’s findings on the shift from Fish to Cross; the timing is important to note because it occurred at the end of the Eleusinian Mysteries in 396 CE, when the Goddess was finally extirpated from Europe’s religio-cultural experience:
‘When questioned about changing Christian symbols over time, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona states in an interview: ‘The fish has had multiple connections and meanings, from the Last Supper to the risen Christ. The fish was found in original depictions of the Last Supper… [It] had many meanings in early Christianity; then, it basically disappeared from the Christian consciousness…only to return in the late twentieth century when the ichthyus was retrieved, or rediscovered, as a symbol. It, not the cross, was the first symbol of Christian identity. The cross didn’t become an identifying and visual symbol until the fourth and fifth centuries…’. (Secrets of the Code, Dan Burnstein, Orion Books 2005.)
Yes, we have played out the Mother/Daughter myth of ancient Greece. After Persephone is abducted and carried away to the Underworld, it is said that Demeter withdrew her grace from the Earth, the crops withered and all sorts of calamities ensued while Demeter mourned the loss and roamed the Earth far and wide in search of her beloved Daughter. I have always sustained that myths, the language of the Soul, are tales of recurrent history – and are therefore universal. Indeed, we are playing out the tale, from the rape (have not women been subjugated to unspeakable physical and psychological horrors, with no end in sight?) to the withering away of the Earth’s offerings.
The Chamber Saga tells us that the culmination has been reached. The chamber the Mother saw andmeasured is the contours in sacred geometry of the Earth’s Soul (Persephone). This is what is required to save the Earth. This is the grace of the Divine Demeter restored. The New Creation must and will be centred on that luminous truth and not the ego, for the Great Mother herself took birth along with her Daughter, the Kore (Kumari in India), to whom she passed on this treasure to save the Earth and restore the Sacred Feminine for all times to come.
I have called the Son’s crucifixion a cosmic aberration. It indicates the conclusive victory of Death. More to the point, it makes of the Earth (the ravished Persephone) Pluto’s Underworld. The precise meaning, because of which I call it a cosmic aberration, is that the evolutionary process the Earth is destined to house is brought to an end if that symbol of the crucified Son and his off-centred Cross is to be the last word of our existence.
The Supramental Shakti has, however, numerous contingency plans up her voluminous sleeve; one of the most meaningful is the Mother’s chamber. The symbolism of its Core is the prophecy in sacred geometry of the Son Victorious and not crucified; it confirms the descent of the Supramental Gnosis as the next level of evolution. Armed with this weapon and its power of Gnostic Truth, the Goddess conquers, and, just as the culmination of the Greek Mysteries portrayed, the initiates chant: Brimos is born of Persephone! The Mother’s chamber-core even tells us the precise year.
That sacred birth, however it was conveyed in the ritual, for the acolytes were sworn to secrecy and none were allowed to reveal explicit details, brings the Fourth Power, the Son, to Earth, and not relegated to any transcendent heaven, just as the Mother’s chamber-core reveals by its sacred geometry. Triptolemos, the conqueror of the ‘three wars’, as he was known, does not fall in line with the Negators and Nay-sayers who seek to prolong the rule of Death and Pluto’s victory. He is the Son Victorious – even as Shiva’s and Parvati’s son Kartikeya is known in India. His coming indicates the transformation, definitive and conclusive, of the fourth planet Mars and all that the planet signifies for the Earth in the human species.
How this relates to the Sacred Feminine is simple to explain: the crucified Son indicates that the play of thegunas, or the Divine Shakti’s play of energy, is interrupted. That play is threefold. In the cosmic harmonies it is expressed as Creation (Rajas), Preservation (Sattva), and Tamas (Dissolution). Without the Fourth Power, the Son, Tamas/Dissolution operates only as Destruction; whereas the true harmony, the true cosmic experience requires Dissolution. This becomes the case if the threefold movement is completed – that is, the movement is not interrupted to force Destruction/Death. Therefore it is said that Inertia is the greatest enemy of humankind. Only if that Fourth Power is impeded in adding his capacity of reversal to the play, can Inertia win the day; he reverses the movement and draws it back to Rajas. From there the play begins again renewed, replenished of energy for another round into eternity.
The glory of our Age is the descent into Earth time of the embodiments of the three gunas, ‘through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth’, as the poet sings, for without this completion the Earth is not saved and doom and gloom prevail.
Incompletion – this is where the aberration comes in: this collapse of energy. Death can never happen as long as the Goddess IS. Hence the desperate attempt during the last Age of Pisces to eliminate any trace of her supremacy and to install in the deepest layers of the human being’s collective consciousness the victory of Death via the Son Crucified. With it went the grand undermining through dogmas that also became rooted deeply in the human collective sub-consciousness: eternal damnation. The worst part is we persist in allowing this to be taught to children from the tenderest age.
Given the content of the Mother’s chamber, that ‘forces’ rose up as in one voice to suppress the knowledge of its existence, should not surprise us. In spite of the trials and tribulations we have had to experience over the past 40 years to keep the vision alive, it has been a fascinating adventure – indeed, far surpassing any fictional thriller. Fascinating to witness is that all, positive and negative, became the tools for its preservation and final overcoming. Using the off-centred poise of man, the Divine Shakti was able to ‘sort out’ those who could ‘build the temple’. When the Mother handed the matter over to the Divine Consciousness for this sorting out, she did so confidently because she knew that her Act of Seeing and Measuring, once having occurred could not be erased from the evolutionary matrix. That is, in the very act of penetrating the Solar World where ‘angels fear to tread’ because one must pass through Death’s realm (which the Mother did in April 1962) before reaching those luminous heights, the Mother opened the passage-way down upon which the new solar creation descends. Sri Aurobindo describes it in his poem A God’s Labour:
Heaven’s fire is lit in the breast of the earth
And the undying suns here burn;
Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth
The incarnate spirits yearn
Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:
Down a gold-red stair-way wend
The radiant children of Paradise
Clarioning darkness’s end.
A little more and the new life’s doors
Shall be carved in silver light
With its aureate roof and mosaic floors
In a great world bare and bright.
I shall leave my dreams in their argent air,
For in a raiment of gold and blue
There shall move on the earth embodied and fair
The living truth of you. (31-7-1935)
Because it is the Goddess in command, the property over which she presides in the cosmic manifestation is movement, motion. Indeed, this is her very essence – and therefore she rules over all things that move: as long as movement IS, she is. Thus, as long as the universe exists, so does the Sacred Feminine and each step forward brings to fruition her Divine Plan. Therefore her only enemy is Inertia, and this is symbolised in the crucified Son. He resurrects, this much is certain – but it is to rise up and away from our woebegone planet Earth, and to pass into the static peace of the transcendence of his Father in heaven, and Earth left bereft of the Sacred Feminine. In this light, in order that the dogma be maintained, our planetary base can never be allowed to experience the Life Divine Sri Aurobindo prophesied. It has to be the hell it presently is.
Sri Aurobindo took birth to reverse that flight. The Mother took birth to re-establish in the hearts of human beings the truth of the cosmic manifestation, as only the Great Mother Demeter could do. The third, her Daughter, took birth to forge the bridge between the cosmos and this Earth – that ‘gold-red stair-way’ of Sri Aurobindo’s vision-poem – on the basis of the secrets she inherited from the Mother in her chamber’s plan, and to thereby eradicate once and for all times to come the rule of Pluto on Earth. She gives birth to Brimos as the myth foretells, and he conquers for his two Mothers on this very Earth.
The two mothers in whom is the Truth, in whom is the mage-wisdom, formed him and brought him to birth like an infant child, they have put him firm in his place and make him grow. Men found in him the navel-centre of all that is moving and stable and they weave by the mind the weft of the seer.(Rig Veda, X, 5)
