13.10.11

Updating the Vedic Altar – 8

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
October 13, 2011



It is well at this point to establish the Mother’s Vedic credentials. That she was a direct link to the Rishis and the school of higher knowledge that was widespread in the Vedic Age becomes obvious when we examine her yogic legacy of the 95 years of her life span. But it is interesting to note that these credentials surfaced even before she took up definitive residence in India by Sri Aurobindo’s side. To prove the point, on 26 November – a date that would surface significantly many years later – in 1915 from Paris, the Mother sent the following description of an experience she had to Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. Perhaps more than any other realisation she was to have, this seems to have been her investiture as the Cosmic Divine, the 6 in the work that lay ahead for her with Sri Aurobindo as the Transcendent 9:

‘The entire consciousness immersed in divine contemplation, the whole being enjoyed a supreme and vast felicity.
‘Then was the physical body seized, first in its lower members and next the whole of it, by a sacred trembling which made little by little even in the most material sensation all personal limits fall away. The being progressively, methodically, grew in greatness, breaking down every barrier, shattering every obstacle, that it might contain and manifest a power which increased ceaselessly in immensity and intensity. It was as if a progressive dilation of the cells until there was a complete identification with the earth: the body of the awakened consciousness was the terrestrial globe moving harmoniously in ethereal space. And the consciousness knew that its global body was thus moving in the arms of the universal Personality, and gave itself, it abandoned itself to Her in an ecstasy of peaceful bliss. Then it felt that its body was absorbed in the body of the universe and one with it; the consciousness became the consciousness of the universe, in its totality immobile, in its internal complexity moving infinitely. The consciousness of the universe sprang towards the Divine in an ardent aspiration, a perfect surrender, and it saw in the splendour of the immaculate Light the radiant Being standing on a many-headed serpent whose body coiled infinitely around the universe. The Being in an eternal gesture of triumph mastered and created at one and the same time the serpent and the universe that issued from it, erect on the serpent he dominated it with all his victorious might, and the same gesture that crushed the hydra, enveloping the universe, gave it eternal birth. Then the consciousness became this Being and perceived that its form was changing more and more; it was absorbed into something which was no longer a form and yet contained all forms, something which, immutable, sees – the Eye, the Witness. And what It sees, is. Then this last vestige of form disappeared and the consciousness was absorbed into the Unutterable, the Ineffable.
‘The return towards the consciousness of the individual body took place very slowly in a constant and invariable splendour of Light and Power and Felicity and Adoration, by successive gradations, but directly, without passing again through the universal and terrestrial forms. And it was as if the modest corporeal form had become the direct and immediate vesture, without any intermediary, of the supreme and eternal Witness.’
Sri Aurobindo’s reply, by letter dated 31.12.1915, confirms that the experience was Vedic, and of an order that would not be recognised by today’s yogis, it is important to note.

‘The experience you have described is Vedic in the real sense, though not one which would easily be recognised by the modern systems of Yoga which call themselves Vedic. It is the union of the “Earth” of the Veda and Purana with the divine Principle, an earth which is said to be above our earth, that is to say, the physical being and consciousness of which the world and the body are only images. But modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine.’
Thus, the above attests to the fact that the Mother was following a line of knowledge that according to Sri Aurobindo was now unknown in India. Later he wrote in The Secret of the Veda that

‘…The Upanishads, mighty as they are, only aspire to bring out, arrange philosophically in the language of later thinking and crown with the supreme name of Brahman the eternal knowledge enshrined in the Vedas. Yet for some two thousand years at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas.' - Sri Aurobindo, India's Rebirth

It would take the descent of Vishnu’s 9th Avatar and his helpers to re-establish the long-lost knowledge that was the hallmark of the ancient tradition. Portions of it remain in evidence in certain extant monuments across the globe; but, like the Rig Veda itself, they are largely incomprehensible. However, with the coming of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, what was lost has been resurrected in an even greater glory given the advancements in the evolutionary process itself. Nothing is to be ignored if the full extent of the truth-conscious Supramental Manifestation is to be appreciated; but without their contribution darkness must prevail. The grace of the Guru is acknowledged in India even today to be the supreme blessing an individual can receive in any given lifetime; but the Mother explained in a letter to a disciple how much greater is that blessing when the Supreme Consciousness itself takes birth and becomes the Guru.
I stated earlier that four birthdates would join to provide the elementary numerical keys of knowledge for the retrieval of the Knowledge and the establishment of Supermind as the highest governing principle of the human evolving species. If we take just Sri Aurobindo’s birth date in conjunction with the Mother’s, it becomes clear that a carefully constructed plan had been set in motion perhaps from the beginning of Time itself – or at least from the beginning of our present evolutionary cycle – with the goal of bringing the Line of Ten Avatars to a culmination in our very times. Thus, Sri Aurobindo’s birthday was 15.8.1872; the Mother’s was 21.2.1878. Note the harmony of 6 between days, months and years:

Between 15 and 21 there are 6 days
Between 8 and 2 there are 6 months
Between 1872 and 1878 there are 6 years
This phenomenon of 6 is remarkable enough, but something even more remarkable occurred involving the days of their passings – the 18 days (3x6) between 17 November (the Mother’s) and 5 December (Sri Aurobindo’s). To compound matters, if this were not enough, there were 6 hours between their passings: the Mother’s occurred at 19:26 hours, and Sri Aurobindo’s at 1:26 AM. Furthermore, the date of the Mother’s important Vedic letter to Sri Aurobindo was 26 November – or the exact halfway date between the two passings. This date – named Immortality Day by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in 1926 – would reveal itself through the measurements of the Chamber to be fundamental in the passage from the 9th to the 10th Avatar of Lord Vishnu, which will be discussed further on in conjunction with details regarding the chamber’s Core.
There is an interesting anecdote regarding the time of the Mother’s passing as officially circulated by the Ashram authorities. It is given as 19:25, not 19:26 as I have stated above. From the first moment I learned of the Ashram timing it seemed obvious to me that the time keeper had erred by one minute. That is, if there had been such a perfect harmony of 6 between their birth dates, it was logical to assume that coming so close to an even 6 hours in their passings, there had to have been a mistake. Perhaps the person entrusted with recording the time of the Mother’s passing had rounded it off to an even number, instead of respecting the passing to the minute. Or perhaps his watch was incorrect by one minute. Whatever had been the case, I was not convinced by the official timing. Three years later I was to receive confirmation of my assessment.
At Sri Aurobindo’s passing the clock in his room stopped at exactly 1:26 AM. It has been preserved with this reading ever since and left on display in his room for visitors to see. But it seemed that no such phenomenon occurred at the time of the Mother’s passing. Nonetheless, I still maintained that the correct time should be taken as 19:26, respecting Mahakala’s clear intention.
Three years later I happened to find myself in the reading room of the Ashram School where an imposing grandfather clock stands. It was not functioning because, I was told, it had stopped exactly when the Mother breathed her last, similar to the clock in Sri Aurobindo’s room. I was gratified to note that its hands pointed to 7:26 – and not 7:25. Of course it had to be so since this sort of precision has been a hallmark of the Supermind, unknown prior to its advent. Or rather, though the harmonies have been ever-present, they could not be ‘read’ or ‘seen’ without the enlightenment, coherency and precision Supermind provides. Sri Aurobindo makes this aspect of Supermind clear in a letter he wrote in February of 1923: ‘…The first condition of the Supermind is exactness, clearness and order both in the total and the details and their relations. Therefore it is a great advantage if there are these elements in the data upon which I have to work and a great disadvantage if they are absent.’ The incorrect recording of the Mother’s passing is a case in point.
There are a number of such harmonies between the births of the complete line of four which constitute the 9th Avataric appearance along with his helpers. They are not random but are an intertwined phenomenon intended to present specific points that need to be rectified in order to re-establish the Sanatana Dharma on its correct foundations. To illustrate, the four Cardinal Points are firm pillars of the Vedic cosmology, but given the fact that astronomers persist in applying the wrong circle for astrological prescriptions and temple timings, their importance has been lost over the centuries. But true to my contention that by their very births the Vishnu emanations rectify or at least locate what is required to re-instate the Vedic tradition, the position of the Sun in each of the four natal horoscopes is situated in one of the four Cardinal corners of their charts; that is, emphasising the equinoxes and solstices. These births stretch across a century – 91 years, 1872-1963 to be precise. But this fourfold harmony was set in place for a very specific purpose: to highlight the need to respect the role the Cardinal Points and the equinoxes and solstices play in the Vedic Cosmology. It needs to be borne in mind that in order for this synchronisation between the four to take place, the exact birth times are the key – not the day or the month or the year, but four separate birth timings. We need to reflect on the question of control, which I have highlighted in the new cosmology, when presented with a configuration of this nature that stands well beyond the comprehension of today’s scientists from any discipline.
There is another such synchronisation, even more remarkable; in this case for the purpose of confirming the importance of the Cosmic Year, as it is sometimes called. This ‘year’ consists of 25,920 Earth years – or one round of the zodiac where passage through each sign requires 2160 years. This celestial movement is produced by the Precession of the Equinoxes. It takes place in a backward movement through the signs due to the Earth’s slow wobble like a gyroscope, whereby her equinoctial plane traces a circle in retrograde motion determining which astrological age of 2160 years the Earth is passing through. We emerged from the Age of Pisces in 1926 to enter our present Aquarian Age at that time.
The Precession of the Equinoxes is immensely important for astrological forecasting when dealing with cosmological periods covering centuries and millennia. This circle traced by the equatorial plane does not hold for individuals but only for vast evolutionary movements. It is through this method that the coming of Vishnu’s Avatars can be known and exactly when since each appearance is separated by approximately 6000 years; more importantly, we learn the task set out for each one to complete. The Precession was known to the ancients across the globe, and also in India, contrary to what scholars believe. This is proven with unparalleled accuracy by the Vishnu praises in the Rig Veda (RV 1, 154). But unfortunately, when the Vedic cosmology and zodiacal script were set aside at the insistence of astronomers, those verses could not be understood properly and the Precessional key they contain to indicate when the Avatar would appear was lost. Even more significantly, horoscopes for individuals are now done based on this vast movement of the Earth’s equatorial plane, in the belief that the circle thus traced on the backdrop of the constellations should be used for all astrological purposes, including ritual and temple timings. This practice should be halted and corrected at the earliest if astrology is to regain its former respected position as a true Vedic science. To each his own, is the motto: the individual’s place is within the tropical zodiac; the passage of the astrological ages is read according to a movement also produced by the Earth but involving not one year as in the Earth’s annual rotation around the Sun but thousands determined by the Precession of the Equinoxes. The error committed by Nirayana astrologers is to apply – incorrectly, in any case – the vast to the small. It is an aberration known only in India, birth place of the Veda!
The Precession of the Equinoxes, coupled with the Vishnu verses from the Rig Veda, are the keys required to read the cosmic credentials of the Avatars; and it is now precisely the Avataric descent in this Aquarian Age that can re-instate the cosmology by their own birthdates according to the Formula established for this purpose. Thus, to highlight the important role the Precession of the Equinoxes plays in the cosmology, the total count of the four dates in question correspond to one of the digits of the Precessional round in years – 25,920. Strung together, each birth date, by reduction to a ‘seed digit’ according to the Vedic method, forms the total year count of one Precessional round: 21.2.1878=2; 15.8.1872=5; 5.1.1938=9; 26.11.1963=2 – or 2/5/9/2 - 0. The Zero describes the supramental process involving Transcendence and Immanence, or the ‘birth of the One that fills the Void’. This will be explained further on. By this presentation, once again we are faced with Mahakala’s unparalleled control that makes a mockery of any ‘before’ or ‘after’, or of any limitation set by the assumed singularities of physics.

The Mother’s Vedic credentials are unmistakably discovered in perhaps the most important area of her competence: the symbol she designed for herself to reflect the most profound aspects of her mission. In fact, it is this symbol that formed the basis for the chamber design, which then brought it into direct connection with the vedi of the Rishis, as I will demonstrate conclusively.
Before all else, an explanation is required of just what her symbol and Sri Aurobindo’s are. They are not logos created by a graphic designer. Symbols of this superior order are based on gnosis; in the Mother’s case they reflect her supramental capacity. Therefore, we are blessed to have them to work with, as I have done. The supramental gnostic quality they possess surfaces when we realise that they hold a content that is applicable. I have discussed Sri Aurobindo’s (Part 3) with particular reference to its central square and the arrangement of petals that provided the sacred key to the descent of Vishnu’s 9th Avatar; not only the Avatar himself, but also his helpers – the 6 and the 3.
Regarding the square, in 1958 the Mother explained its significance: ‘The junction of both (triangles) – the central square – is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme, the lotus.’

It is important to note her words carefully because some sustain – for example, Peter Heehs in his recent biography The Lives of Sri Aurobindo – that he was never referred to as the Avatar. Therefore, Heehs dismisses any such claims by his disciples or devotees as simple hagiography. This cavalier dismissal reveals the shallowness of his research. There are abundant references to his avatarhood in the files of the Ashram Archives Department where he worked – particularly available there are my extensive publications on this very subject. More pointedly, though having resided in India for several decades and having immersed himself in Sri Aurobindo’s writing on Indian culture, it appears Heehs failed to appreciate the role of the Vishnu Line of Ten and its singular place in Vedic civilisation.Link
The Mother answered many questions from disciples on symbols and their significance, as we find in her collected works. It was my direct experience that she withheld the gnostic significance based on the acolyte’s development, respecting the tradition of exoteric and esoteric levels. To provide an example, in reply to my query regarding the meaning of the number 9, since I was not satisfied with what had been explained to disciples, her explanation to me was one of the most important keys I received from her before she left this plane: she simply replied: The 9 is creation in matter. With this explanation, unrecorded elsewhere and which at the time seemed somewhat incomplete, when combined with the 0 provided the key to rest (0) and motion (9) of incomparable value in applying the Formula of Supermind. (See, The Tenth Day of Victory, Chapter 30.)
While identifying all the players involved in the appearance of the Avatar, this arrangement of 9/6/3 is applicable and made possible because of the number system and calendar, both of which are now universally adopted in this Aquarian Age. Its main attribute is precisely universalism, as in the Vedic call vasudhaiva kutumbakam = Earth is like a family. Similarly, the Mother’s symbol is applicable but with respect to the scale of 12 (the zodiac) and therefore to the months of the year. This application is carried over to sacred geometry and architecture via the chamber plan, consisting as it does of 12 walls among other elements, all of which are derived from her symbol. The Mother has confirmed this application in her discussion on the original plan by briefly stating that each wall is a month of the year; this is the Vedic methodology of correspondences.
The Mother’s symbol is placed centrally in the chamber. It lies horizontally in the centre, upholding the chamber’s Core, occupying 3 meters of the total 24m diameter. Given these profound applications I refer to the symbols as gnostic. They do come from a plane that until now has been tapped only sporadically but never in the impeccable manner of the Mother’s usage. However, there is far more contained in the Mother’s symbol to discover. This is achieved with the help of the following verses from the Rig Veda:


Twelve spokes, one wheel, navels three.
Who can comprehend this?

On it are placed together

Three hundred and sixty like pegs.

They shake not in the least.

(Rig Veda 1.154.48)


Here is the Mother’s own gnostic symbol. Every item enumerated by the Rishi finds its correspondence in her symbol, thereby establishing conclusively her Vedic credentials.


There are 12 ‘spokes’ and ‘navels three’ – by far the most significant element in the hymn because one does not easily understand how there can be ‘one wheel’ with three hubs or navels. In the Mother’s symbol above, this is made clear. Indeed, the three hubs/navels play an immensely important role in deciphering the coming of Vishnu’s Avatars, as I will explain in the following section of this series. The 360 ‘pegs’ are understood by the circle itself consisting of 360 degrees, as all circles do. Finally, the Rishi makes the most important declaration of all: They shake not in the least. This is completely contrary to the current Nirayana system of astrology, employed throughout India for temple timings and horoscopy, which does indeed SHAKE. Whereas, the Vedic system based on the tropical zodiac never ‘shakes’, resting as it does on the four unchanging pillars of equinoxes and solstices.
The Mother’s symbol presents the static, unmoving image of the Rishi’s verses. In the next section I will add the dynamism required to allow us to locate the appearances in time. This is the addition the third in the Line brings to the descent. I will use the several items presented in this section for the purpose of setting the Mother’s symbol in motion – that is, the Precessional Year of 25,920 Earth years, and the four Cardinal corners of the fourfold division of the circle of 12, based on the equinoxes and solstices. These combine on the backdrop of the Rig Veda verses quoted above to provide details of the Dasavataras, in a concise example of what Sri Aurobindo stated were the necessary conditions to recognise the Supramental Gnosis: ‘…The first condition of the Supermind is exactness, clearness and order both in the total and the details and their relations’. In the course of this study we have seen how nothing could have made sense of the revelations I am presenting without the explicit correspondences involving that total vision; or the seeing of the whole expressed diagrammatically as the circle; and then the ‘details’ which form the points on the circle’s periphery; and most important of all, the relations between all these elements, converging on a central point. We see this in the symbol of the Sun which Sri Aurobindo held to be the symbol of Supermind:. Mind alone cannot fathom a seeing of this nature. It is only possible with the advent of the truth-conscious Supermind.

No comments:

Post a Comment