Aeon Centre of Cosmology Website Launched

"It is not through a repetition of rituals, as inspiring as they may be, or by the chanting of mantras that the connection with the Veda is maintained, rather, only the thread of Knowledge can be the direct link between India today and of the Vedic Age, precisely as the word implies - veda, knowledge.  That this potent word lies at the root of the civilisation surely indicates a unique destiny." ['Puranic Cosmology Updated,' Part 1]

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New Website Launched

We are pleased to announce the official launch of our new website:

 

www.aeoncentre.com

It's hard to believe that only two months have passed since The Future Realisation exhibition in New Delhi. Among other things, Thea has been writing a new series of articles, The Conundrum of India's Choice of Destiny, which are being published in the Organiser magazine and are also available on our website in their full, unedited form.

The website itself has grown organically out of our experience in New Delhi and our understanding for the need to make this work more accessible to a wider public. We hope that it will become an important resource for those who vibrate to the mission of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother -- all who aspire to be conscious instruments of the Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.

We are re-issuing the Vishaal Newsletter, originally written by Thea and published by the Aeon Centre of Cosmology between the years 1985-1995, packed with in-depth applications of the New Way. The first issue is now online and we will be releasing new issues regularly. Stay tuned for much more to come.

We have also created Aeon Forum, a place where everyone can engage in dialogues beyond science and spirituality. We hope that you will join us in the important work of seeing in understanding, and evolving our collective views beyond the polarities of secular and spiritual dogma. Although the polar tension continues to increase in India and abroad, this only means that those who see the way out of the morass have a greater responsibility now than ever to light the way forward. And those of us who are just learning to see -- a greater responsibility now than ever to focus our lens of perception, to learn to see in a new way.

Included below is the Welcome Message that our director, Thea, wrote for the new website. We hope you will take the time to read it, and join us in this new and exciting phase of the work!

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"Why is Aeon Centre of Cosmology putting forward its work of the past several decades in this new comprehensive format? The reason is that never like now has the national discourse in India and throughout the world become so intensely polarised. In India this polarisation revolves around a question that seems to defy solution: Is India, born as an independent nation in 1947, to revert to establishing itself on its ancient moorings, or will those be discarded in favour of the reigning principles of our 21st Century, in many ways foreign to the ancient tradition?

"This is the new India’s 67th year. However, that newness is only a small part of her history. The contours of her abiding civilisation are found in carry-overs from very ancient times. Having this dual living framework of destiny and being unique among all nations for this very reason, Aeon Centre of Cosmology is duty-bound to provide answers that can help resolve the issue of an amalgam of both ancient and new as a living force within the context of conditions on the globe today."

Link to full message at www.aeoncentre.com
 

What Is Lacking in National Discourse?

Link HERE to read the full article in Organiser.

  

Excerpts: 'India has managed to preserve that foundational base and carry it forward into the 21st Century. In spite of all the vicissitudes, the fumblings, the missteps and falls, the base is preserved and requires simply the act of resuscitating the body that lies dormant beneath the veils of the ages – not dead as all once-great ancient civilisations are, but merely in a slumber while waiting for the appropriate time for resuscitation. That moment began early in the last century; it has been a long process, the culmination of which is being reached in our very own times.'

'In June of 2013, the divine Ganga conveyed the message that time is running out. She broke through seemingly ironclad barriers, crashing over whatever stood in her way as she delivered the message that no resistance would be brooked: the time for change has come; no longer can society continue paying mere lip service to the Goddess. ... The Future Realisation, an offering of Aeon Centre of Cosmology at Mati Ghar of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, in early January 2015, is an exhibition that joins in conveying Ganga’s message.' [emphasis added]

Link HERE for more information on The Future Realisation - New Delhi (1-5 January 2015).

The Perennial Dispute: Is Astrology Science or Superstition?

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
22.12.2014 (the true Makar Sankranti)

Science or superstition? This could be the introductory query on what The Future Realisation (TFR) exhibition consists of, to be held in Delhi at Mati Ghar of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, from 1^st January 2015. To further clarify, it is an applied cosmology to distinguish it from that of the physical sciences which is largely theoretical and in many cases speculative. In addition, the public is likely to confuse the contents of TFR with astrology as it is practiced in India today. Therefore, a clarification needs to be made at the outset. TFR displays the entirely new Indo-Centric Cosmology; there is a certain language commonality between astrology and this new cosmology; but the similarity ends there. This new approach to the sacred sciences uplifts astrology to a higher level; while not dismissing it; in the process TFR reveals unknown aspects of the art.

Periodically the debate arises in the national discourse: Is astrology science or superstition? To illustrate, on 9.12.2014, an article appeared in The Hindu editorial page ‘Tampering with Scientific Temper’, by Peter Ronald deSouza. While The Future Realisation is not centred on astrology as such, it does adequately answer this question because of the language – the Zodiac – common to both. In India an astrologer is approached almost exclusively for predicting a person’s future; or else for ritualistic purposes, to ascertain the most auspicious timing for events. But this is only a small part of its true purpose, which is a body of higher knowledge for initiates – now, unfortunately, lost in India. Nonetheless, this process called the Journey in the Rig Veda continues to be the mainstay of all the systems and traditions that lay claim to this single inspirational source, even though most of the hymns remain a mystery.

In ancient times the zodiac, astrology’s basic alphabet, conveyed a body of higher knowledge; hence it formed part of the sacred sciences not only in India but in all the Mystery Schools of the ancient world. Forecasting the future was only a small aspect of the practice, though an important and necessary ingredient insofar as astrology is a study of Time which comprises past, present and future: the unity of Time, in the Vedic Age called trikaladrishti – or the vision of the three times. As an element of higher knowledge its threefold aspect cannot be ignored. But the sanctity of the art resided in the fact that its main purpose was to foster a perception based on unity. And this was to provide a basis for the whole field of life, to ultimately reach a harmonious fulfilment.

Vishnu Trivikrama in Time, not Space

Today this is not at all the purpose of the study of Time, in astrology or otherwise. As an example we may take perhaps the most famous of all myths found in the Rig Veda, Vishnu Trivikrama. The common interpretation, purely speculative, is that the three strides are spatial measurements albeit moving across dimensions; whereas the myth is very specific: the key to the correct interpretation lies in Time – more specifically, these Vishnu verses convey correctly when his Avatars will take birth on Earth, particularly the last three, the 7^th, the 8^th and 9^th, or his three strides. This is an example of the knowledge that was lost when pundits lost the cosmic connection, foundation of everything the Sanatana Dharma is based on. This time factor is embedded in the circumscribing cosmic harmony and for this reason much of the ancient scriptures are not understood. Sri Aurobindo wrote in the early part of the last century, 

‘…It is because we do not understand the Vedas that three-fourths of the Upanishads are a sealed book to us. Even of the little we think we can understand, much has been insecurely grasped and superficially comprehended… For want of this key profound scholars have fumbled and for want of this guidance great thinkers gone astray…’

‘Religious movements have come and gone or left their mark but after all and through all the Veda remains to us our Rock of the Ages, our eternal foundation… 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.’ (India’s Rebirth, emphasis mine.)

The Philosophy of Astrology

To return to the question, Is astrology superstition or science? The answer lies in the manner we approach the art; we may call it the philosophy of astrology. We do not expect a person unschooled in physics to pass judgment on relativity or quantum physics. But for some strange reason we accept that a physicist, for example, is expected to be qualified to pass judgment on a sacred art, though he has never been schooled in the subject. And by ‘schooled’ I mean the purification process a true astrologer must pass through before any of the more arcane knowledge is revealed. This is often referred to as an initiation. When that intense discipline is undergone, usually covering many more years than the amount put into obtaining a degree in physics, the adept is able to penetrate the mysteries and come upon answers that science has never been able to provide.

The reason is simple enough where the sacred sciences are concerned: The foundation of a true astrologer/cosmologist is a consciousness of unity. Its establishment is the very first step – and it is the longest and hardest. Once attained it becomes the anchor or axis for the seer; he or she can then extend beyond from that innermost centre to expound on the grandeur seen from that tiniest point, ‘no bigger than a thumb’, as the Upanishad describes the individual soul. But this begs for some clarification because the term is not easily understood.

‘Unity’ in the context of a sage or seer of the true Vedic sort involves the ability to expand one’s consciousness to embrace this side and that – i.e., beyond the event horizon of contemporary physics. This is unity for the Rishi: the ability to move across thresholds that science cannot penetrate. This barrier is admittedly out of bounds for the scientist because we know that the mathematical foundation of all contemporary sciences breaks down at that threshold; whereas, the seer crosses over the ‘horizon’ as no scientist can do, precisely because he or she is graced with a perceptive capacity that permits the construction of a bridge between here and there.

That is the true unity-consciousness, differentiating it as we must from the common understanding: i.e., a consciousness that sees ‘the unity between all things’. To be precise, on this side of the demarcation that experience is more accurately known as Oneness. The sage sees this ‘oneness’ upon which basis he or she can say: We are THAT. We are all One in an indivisible unity.

Beyond Relativity, the call of the hour

The factor that allows the sage to possess a unity-consciousness and bridge the subtle and the physical is the discovery of the true function of gravity, whatever the name or the description given to the experience in earlier times. We know that the stumbling-block the physicist faces today in the discovery of a Theory of Everything (TOE) is precisely gravity. Understandably, because gravity is that very bridge. Gravity is the cosmic property that bridges the subtle and the physical. It is the carry over from the other side to this; hence to understand its true nature the physicist must employ a different mathematics, a system that is intrinsically unifying. In the new cosmology this system is called the Mathematics of Unity; in Vedic Mathematics it is reducing a number to its ‘seed digit’, as in the following: 2014: 2+0+1+4=7. Thus 7 is the year’s seed digit.

But to be borne in mind is that this truly Vedic realisation does not form a part of the modern schools of Yoga, or even of the schools of philosophy that have arisen after the time of the Buddha.

This answers another question in the national discourse: Why impose Vedic Mathematics in school curricula today, when we have much more ‘advanced’ systems and, above all, the omniscient computer? It is because one of the most important elements in this ‘obsolete’ system is the focus on ‘seed digits’? On the ‘other side’ whole tones are the key to the mysteries discovered there. That is the mathematics that can be employed to understand how gravity operates, how it bridges the subtle and material – and therefore the role of Time because the contraction of gravity is actually Time on the other side of the event horizon. TFR reveals with precision how the revelation of a simple formula, 9/6/3/0-1, can prove the connectivity between the subtle and material through the application of the formula in a series of twelve births that on this side, according to the birth dates of these twelve individuals, display the control of Mahakala who himself bridges the subtle and physical; that is, TFR reveals that our material dimension is the extension of the One. On the other side, Time is contracted in quanta of triads expressed in the formula as 9/6/3/0. But when the Zero is reached in the descending compression, by the intensity of this compaction, the Zero-Womb of fullness gives birth to the One. Thereafter the flow is sequential – 1 to 2 to 3, and so forth. This very message was given by Aurobindoavatar from the beginning of his joint mission with the Mother in the central square of his own symbol, called the Lotus of the Avatar, with the formula 9, 6, 3 in its petals and leaves. 

In an applicable, non-speculative manner this reveals that the understanding of the nature of our world is expressed in this formula, countering, or rather completing Relativity Theory: 

3 dimensions of Time (the triadic compacting quanta),

the 4th dimension of which is the point of space 

From that compacted bija-point – in sound-vibration it is the primordial Om – the physical manifestation evolves sequentially; thereafter, relativity theory steps in, but because of the disconnection physics does not have a foundation in absoluteness, as enjoyed in the Vedic Age, and only relativity lies at the root of whatever our 20^th Century has given rise to: wonders of technology, yes, but also the most destructive weapons ever devised by man, an impossibility in the next step of evolution. But if we know the contents of that sacred Seed, we can know where evolution is taking us. That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of The Future Realisation: to explore that tiniest particle containing the divine Purpose that carries us to the next stage of evolution.

From the first breath at the moment of birth, that compacted Seed (from the other side) is integrated with the entire solar system – that is, the individual at his or her very birth is drawn into the cosmic harmony and is able to learn through the horoscope what part is to be played in the course of the sequential extension thereafter. No science or technology can perform this feat for individuals born on this planet – but of course the issue is that astrologers themselves of the contemporary brand have no understanding of the sacred nature of their art. They are not excluded from the assessment Sri Aurobindo made above (p.2). On the contrary, they are the most responsible for the decline because it is their duty to carry the message of this sanctity to the masses. Through the Hindu calendar, for example, those masses are led astray from this highest truth. Sri Aurobindo explains the mechanism we are discussing, of cosmic directions – vertical/contraction, horizontal/expansion – in terms of yoga in this way: 

‘There are in fact two systems simultaneously active in the organisation of the being and its parts: one is concentric, a series of rings or sheaths with the psychic at the centre; another is vertical, an ascension and descent, like a flight of steps, a series of superimposed planes with the supermind-overmind as the crucial nodus of the transition beyond the human into the Divine.’ 

In this paragraph Sri Aurobindo has described not only the vertical and horizontal ‘directions’, the destiny pattern of every individual, but a pure example of the control of Mahakala is the fact that TFR will be displayed in Mati Ghar at the IGNCA to physically express the same inward turn – three galleries, the innermost being that ‘psychic centre’ of his description. In TFR that ‘circle’ contains the Core of the Mother’s original plan with precise measurements given by her. 

Sri Aurobindo continues, 

‘First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being, and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts.’ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga

Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the eternal aphorism

The convergence of the circumscribing data of the cosmic harmony as captured in the natal horoscope presents a super-photograph of the vastest dimensions to the astrologer-seer, as if it were the individual’s own private 0-1 experience – the reversal from vertical-contraction to horizontal-expansion, or extension in measurable planetary time. This is the key to the birth process lived by every creature that inhabits planet Earth.

Reading a horoscope is the same: penetration into the Seed of one’s individual compaction of Time in the space ‘no bigger than a thumb’. From birth that seed-essence begins its extension in and of Time. Therefore those triadic quanta in the Seed, or the content of the soul, are actually lived on this side where conscious awareness is possible, where evolution takes place. The meaning is that each individual incarnation is the image of THAT; and through each soul a seed of That is embodied here when birth occurs on this side of the horizon. Our lives, every second we breathe is the Transcendent experiencing the evolution of Itself in this material universe, on this most favoured of all the planets because its position in the third orbit of the System allows the Law of Three to function, to do what it was created for: it permits the individual to realise That as the sustenance of life and to understand that the purpose of birth is nothing other than to manifest the ultimate, maximum expression of the contents of the Seed on this side of the Horizon. The privilege birth offers is the fact that awareness is a property only of this material dimension, as well as growth into the divine Image. The coming race of gnostic beings differs from mortals of Martanda’s creation because they take birth in full knowledge of their divinity, their divine essence, and consciously participate with the Supreme to give the purest expression in matter to the highest Light in this universe whose number is 9.

After all, what is superstition? It is when the light is absent, when, as Sri Aurobindo wrote in the last century, ‘…the body remained but the soul of knowledge had fled from its coverings’. The aim of TFR is to offer a portion of that Light to illumine the path ahead and, above all else, to eliminate superstition – not by throwing the baby out with the bath water, but by introducing a higher synthesising quotient that elevates what has been covered in veils over the ages to the experience of a new Harmony. It is the new principle the Avatar introduced by his tapasya: the truth-conscious Supermind.

The 9th Manifestation: Prophecy of the Navagrahas

The Hindu temple as I have stated time and again is the repository of a lost knowledge on the subcontinent. It was conceptualised to preserve the ancient wisdom through a long period of humiliating darkness. In this 9^th Manifestation we are destined to emerge from that darkness, never more to suffer regression. It is the special quality of this Manifestation because being the 9^th it means that like a foetus in gestation for the past 77,760 years, the Divine Child is finally born. It means that the era of 3 x 3 has finally arrived. Everything we have known until now, even our most luminous seeings and spiritual attainments, will appear unreal and will pale into insignificance with the descent of this Gnostic Light.

Regarding the triadic quanta and astrology, here is an example of how superstition, or so it is thought by many, is simply the lack of knowledge because of a condition of incompletion. At the entrance to every Hindu temple we find the Navagrahas. This is one of science’s most conclusive ‘proofs’ that astrology is not a science. And why? Simply because the temple inculcates in each and every worshipper that 3 x 3 = 9 must be the focus, or we could say, the secret support behind the worship, the imprinting that must never be lost sight of. Science claims that this item is proof of the lack of scientific knowledge because astrologers do not know that Rahu and Ketu are not planets. Including them in the triadic presentation is tantamount to the greatest ignorance in their eyes. 

 Navagraha of Hindu Temples 

The truth is that the supreme value of the Navagrahas is to keep the divine Measure alive and uppermost in the devotee’s mind, coupled with a sense of belonging to the solar system: the Law of Three and the 9 are the key to the universe, as also believed by the great inventor and scientist, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943): ‘If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6, 9, then you would have a key to the Universe.’
 

The importance of keeping the measure alive is in attendance of the solar system to the eye of the observer reaching its own maturity where the Law of Three and the divine Measure of 9 can be integrated into the lived experience of inhabitants of Earth. That maturity was attained in the last century just at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius in 1926. Shortly thereafter, in 1930 completion was reached and the system then expanded to 9 (the planets) and 0 (the Sun). Thus the Navagrahas are the foretelling of the Divine Measure that our solar system would attain centuries ahead, indicating the same expansion for the human species that would then be able to appreciate the greater harmony open to the perceiving eye of humanity. For this to occur the discovery of the Zero was of paramount importance because the count goes from 0 to 9; and this too India has given to the world. But how many in India and elsewhere could have imagined the future that simple unpretentious Naught held in its bosom? Originally configured as the Dot or Point, it was fullness – purnata – and not the shunya of today. This development from Point to the empty Circle tells the history of the decline better than all words.

Recently a parliamentarian stated that astrology was the greatest science. He was ridiculed. But every historian knows that astrology was for long considered the Mother of all Science. And according to what is written here, how can we claim that it is mere superstition? Where is the contemporary scientific discipline that can bridge the other side and this? But of course if science remains entrenched in the now stale and exhausted atheist mindset it seeks to impose on students under the guise of the ‘scientific temperament’, the very postulation is meaningless. For these entrenched fundamentalists there is actually no ‘other side’. Then the question to ask is why do they admit that their methodology breaks down at the event horizon if there is nothing other than what we can see and touch on this end of the spectrum?

Astrology and the new cosmology deal with Time. It is not a question of the influence of planets (another stick to beat the astrologer with since no such ‘influence’ has ever been detected). Time expresses itself in this solar system through orbits. It is a harmony of orbits that ‘influences’. And they work in triads. This is another indication of the tremendously important stage we have reached as a species: this system we belong to, our ‘extended family’, has finally reached the maturity indicated in the Measure of 9. Until that moment arrived in the last century when Pluto joined the holy family of our solar system, we could never hope to banish superstition forever. But of course there are those in the scientific community who insist on downgrading Pluto to the status of a non-planet. This issue is of no concern. Orbits, triads of 3, this is the only issue, the real issue that informs us we are on the threshold of a very great change. And India stands at the centre of it all. Blessed are her sages that have kept the tradition alive and managed to inculcate, emblazon the 9 into the consciousness of seekers across the ages in attendance of this sublime moment.

Science must abdicate before a higher truth

The exhibition offered to the Delhi public should be visited primarily by scientists, those who hold the entrenched belief that astrology, a relative of this new cosmology, is mere superstition and must be erased from the memory of the nation at all costs. While The Future Realisation is not a display of astrology as such, I repeat, we share a common language. I throw down the gauntlet to members of the scientific community to visit the exhibition and then to participate in a debate on 5 January at 5 PM, on the evidence on display that ought to challenge the mind of anyone believing to have a truly scientific temper. We would like a debate on how various points of this sacred cosmology would be answered by the scientist – or dismissed – such as the connected series of twelve births spread across a century fulfilling with exactitude the formula 9/6/3/0-1. Most will want to brush off the evidence on display as mere coincidence; however, this becomes untenable when that evidence is so voluminous as to render the label ludicrous. Hiding behind this worn-out excuse will only further erode its credibility.

The point being made is that to pass a proper scientific judgement on this new Indo-centric cosmology as displayed in The Future Realisation, the scientist has to be thoroughly familiar with its basic tenets. First and foremost he or she would have to dismiss preconceptions and approach the material on face value, so to speak. The methodology and formulations of contemporary science must be set aside. This is a system beyond both science and spirituality.

On 24.5.1962, the Mother discussed her experiences, then in the germinating stage, related to this very topic. What the Mother was waiting for before she could adequately describe her experiences is the key – the lived experience: 

‘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…’

‘…These 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.

Swacch Bharat - The Epic Task of Cleaning Up India's Epic Mess

by Lori Tompkins

30 October 2014

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the occasion of the 67^th anniversary of India's Independence on the 15th of August 2014 to announce several initiatives towards bettering India, not only for the benefit of the country itself but for the benefit of the world.¹  He underscored this message with words once spoken by Swami Vivekananda:

'I can see before my eyes Mother India awakening once again. My Mother India would be seated as the World Guru. Every Indian would render service towards welfare of humanity. This legacy of India would be useful for the welfare of the world.'

In his speech Modi also noted that the 15^th of August was the birth anniversary of 'Maharishi Aurobindo'² who also recognized that 'the divine power and spiritual heritage of India will play an important role towards the welfare of the world.'

One of the initiatives Modi laid out towards this goal of uplifting India to her world-illuminating nature, is the work establishing cleanliness in India which he states is a primary concern of his administration.

'... [A]fter so many years of independence ... we still want to live in filthiness? ... If one hundred and twenty five crore countrymen decide that they will never spread filthiness, which power in the world has ability to spread filthiness in our cities and villages? Can't we resolve this much?'

As a hopeful answer to this question for all of India, Modi announced the Swacch Bharat or Clean India campaign to be launched on 2 October 2014 in honor of the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi who had 'cleanliness and sanitation closest to his heart'. The intention set by Modi was for Indians 'not to leave a speck of dirt in our village, city, street, area, school, temple, hospital, and what have you, by 2019 when we celebrate 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.'

Thea (Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet) has recently discussed the need for Indians (and those concerned with India's role on the world stage) to understand the root cause of India's mess in Part Four of her series 'Reflections on the Nature of the Real'.³ She points out that whereas Gandhi himself was not actually in a position to understand and effectively address this root cause of the pervasive mess, Sri Aurobindo was in such a position and he did get to the root or cause of the problem. Hopefully after reading this article, readers will better appreciate the fitting coincidence of the Swacch Bharat initiative being announced on Sri Aurobindo's birth anniversary considering that his mahayoga was an important and primary step for India towards her illumination and organization. Thea writes:

'.... [I]t was the labour of Vishnu’s 9th Avatar, Sri Aurobindo, that made it possible for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare that "India would be clean by 2019"....

'This first cause [of the filth in India] was a pernicious undermining in the spiritual domain that began approximately around the time the world entered the 9th Manifestation in 234 BCE, marking a stark departure from the realisations of the Rishis in the Vedic Age.'⁴ ... [This departure lays] at the basis of every successful invasion and colonisation ever since. This understanding is reached today only if we manage to enlarge our view of evolution to include matters of the spirit as well as material. Both evolve, pari passu in fact. The evolution of the Spirit is the driving force of the material. Without it we would, as an evolving world, collapse into the ‘nothingness’ Science and even certain spiritual greats cherish dearly. ...

'The cause lay in the direction yogic and philosophic systems cemented in the spiritual consciousness of the civilisation as the be-all and end-all of every quest from the time of Gautam the Buddha. Simply put, it was Otherworldliness. A ‘seed’ was planted  that undermined the Earth-centred quest of the Vedic Age as described in the Rig Veda, the world’s oldest scripture and the bedrock of the civilisation even today, though it has moved so far away from that Earth-centred direction to find itself unable even to satisfactorily decipher the treasure left to us by the Rishis. The good news is that this decline, this degeneration that has become so evident in the physical through the filth that we cannot ignore and that welcomes every visitor to India today, is part of the system of renewal and re-establishment of the eternal Dharma.

'... Sri Aurobindo wrote in the first half of the last century that the task of Kalki, tenth in the Vishnu Line, would be precisely "to correct that error". The bedrock of Fullness was slowly displaced when Otherworldliness became the goal over two millennia ago, thus leaving the work incomplete, or only "halfway there", in his view.

'Only those who have experienced at close hand the labour of reversal [accomplished by Sri Aurobindo], as I have called it, can understand what a colossal task this has been. It entailed reversing an otherworldly goal and positing that as the ultimate attainment of any spiritual quest, because that created a split in an area that had never suffered a severance of this order. The Vedic Age was characterised by a seamless unity between Spirit and Matter. There was recognition of the various planes of consciousness, or sheaths that constitute both the individual and collective consciousness-being, but never a linear, polar positioning. It is to be noted that this linearity has plagued not only the subcontinent but the entire world. Those ancient civilisations that shared the unity poise in time and space, all succumbed to the same undermining in the Age of Pisces as India has; none survived, none were able to fend off the onslaught of Otherworldliness until finally this projection culminated in some of the major religions of the world, all of which arose in the past Age of Pisces, all of which enjoin their followers to aspire for salvation and ultimate fulfilment in heaven after death. In other words, this planet can never provide that fulfilment.'

Thea, a maharishi in her own right, acknowledges that Sri Aurobindo's reversal of this inevitable decline and departure from the unified truth-consciousness and vision of the Vedic Seers was not some minor or casual work or yoga, but rather the work, the duty and task of the Avatar of Vishnu, the Preserver in the Age of Aquarius.⁵  He exposed the old seed of division and disharmony ˗ the emptiness or void at the heart of our manifestation and civilization, and established the seed of the luminous truth-consciousness and solar world of the Vedic Rishis in our midst, in our age ˗ the seed of unity, harmony and fullness.

The truth is, the more conscious people become of the roots of their problems and of the true keys or seeds of recovery, the quicker the recovery will be accomplished. With that in mind, even while enacting and celebrating the tremendous task of Swacch Bharat under the spectacles of Mahatma Gandhi, perhaps Indians can find it in their hearts and minds to duly appreciate Aurobindo-avatar for laying the ground work and establishing a higher field of possibilities for India, within which Bharat Mata may come back into unity and harmony and shine as an example and guru for the entire world, reeducating the world as to the true nature of yoga which seems to be another primary concern of Prime Minister Modi who concluded his speech to the United Nations General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York City on 27 September 2014 with a reminder and call to the world:

'Yoga is an invaluable gift of our ancient tradition. Yoga embodies unity of mind and body; thought and action; restraint and fulfillment; harmony between man and nature; a holistic approach to health and well being. It is not about exercise but to discover the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and the nature. By changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness, it can help us deal with climate change. Let us work towards adopting an International Yoga Day.' [bold emphasis added]

In his 2014 Independence Day speech to India, Prime Minister Modi invoked a Vedic mantra, Sangachchhdhvam Samvadadhvam sam wo manansi jaanataam, translated as, 'We walk together, we move together, we think together, we resolve together and together we take this country forward.' This mantra, taken from Mandala 10, Sukha 191, Verse 2 of the Rig Veda,⁶ is a mantra of the common yajna, the common yoga, the common sacrifice and evolutionary journey of all beings on Earth as organized by the all-bearing and all-harmonizing divine fire of the soul, Agni. Sri Aurobindo's translation of Sukha 191, found in Hymns to the Mystic Fire (i.e. Hymns to Agni) reminds us that real togetherness is born from this singular hub, navel or seat of real knowledge.

1. O Fire, O strong one, as master thou unitest us with all
things and art kindled high in the seat of revelation; do
thou bring to us the Riches.

2. Join together, speak one word, let your minds arrive at
one knowledge even as the ancient gods arriving at one
knowledge partake each of his own portion.

3. Common Mantra have all these, a common gathering to
union, one mind common to all, they are together in one
knowledge; I pronounce for you a common Mantra, I do
sacrifice for you with a common offering.

4. One and common be your aspiration, united your hearts,
common to you be your mind,—so that close companionship
may be yours.

This verse and mantra is, of course, not just for India. Sri Aurobindo's revelations in The Secret of the Veda and elsewhere in his works, make it quite clear that the discovery of and journey within this common unified field (yajna) and evolutionary path was the central theme of the Vedas. Indians might wish to consider the real possibility that, without beholding this secret or key given by Sri Aurobindo, they have not yet fully understood the meaning and power of this Vedic mantra and hence are not yet in a position to understand how such a harmonious Sangha or state of togetherness truly comes into existence and truly holds together.

And so if Sri Aurobindo has given India and the world its key to understanding the Vedic gnosis of togetherness, hopefully Indians at least will proceed to recognize and celebrate this accomplishment. It is not simply a matter of giving credit where credit is due (which is important in its own right), it is a matter of acquiring knowledge ˗ a matter of cultivating a unified consciousness ˗ by identification with THAT, and hence being able to begin the process of dismantling and reversing the damage of the 'falsehood ... planted deep at the very root of things'⁷ causing disharmony and fragmentation in our individual and collective fields of being and becoming. Because if it can't be done individually, it can't be done collectively.

Sri Aurobindo understood this grand task as a 'God's labour'. No doubt, the more people who understand this labor and accomplishment of his, and thereby understand the path laid out for our own labor, the farther along we will be in our ability not only to clean up our ill-born messes, but to become living examples of a truth-born organized field of unity consciousness. How wonderful it would be if Sri Aurobindo's 144th (1 + 4 + 4 = 9) birthday anniversary in 2016 (2 + 0 + 1 + 6 = 9) was accompanied by an Indian-wide acknowledgement of his ground breaking work towards not only an independent India, but a luminous and pristine India as well. Perhaps Indians will find it in their hearts to celebrate the victory of the 9th Avatar of Vishnu in this coming 9 year (2016), a victory which has laid the way for India's restoration as a field and center of Gnosis or Truth-Consciousness in our current age.

It is through the life, work and yogic lineage of Sri Aurobindo that the Hindu mythology of the line of Ten Avatars (Dasavatara) of Vishnu is uplifted from its current status as an obsolete and inconsequential myth into a jaw-dropping display of the manner in which our Vedic ancestors intricately understood our unified field at least 5,000 years ago. A recent article entitled 'Time and Torsion in a Conscious, Holographic Universe' by Brendon D. Murphy points to this 'unified tapestry' of our universe currently being explored and acknowledged by some modern scientists:

'... we are all entangled at the most fundamental level of reality—which is a unified field of consciousness itself.

'... we have this incredible universe permeated with intelligence at all scales, the holographic principle demands that these different expressions of consciousness must be integrated and woven together in a unified psychic tapestry; interconnected in ways unrestricted by space-time (nonlocally).

'... we can see now that the ever-present “past” is always nested within the now, meaning that time is indeed “holographic” (whole in every part) and unfolds in a “fractal” self-referencing manner.'

Indians can be rightfully proud that the Vedic culture was so advanced as to know these essential, all-organizing and all-harmonizing truths of our existence and to be able put them into practice through their own methods and measures of time and space (and our evolution in it) so very long ago.⁸ The fitting catch-22 is that Indians have to understand and acknowledge the truth and applicability of these methods and measures in the REAL world. Otherwise, it will prove rightfully impossible for India to rise to the role of World-Guru (i.e. bearer of truth-consciousness) on the basis of her much esteemed Vedic foundation if that foundation or altar remains effectively desecrated, negated, dis-empowered and collapsed ... null and void within the self-destructing field and age of our dim-lit mental consciousness.

With all of this in mind, readers are invited to read a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to his brother Barin in 1920 which underscores the newness of his yogic mission as well as the old nature of the 'partial' yogas which coincided with India's degeneration and loss of power by which 'a whole race should become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep Tamas'.

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LETTER TO BARINDRA KUMAR GHOSE

by Sri Aurobindo, 7th April 1920

I have received your three letters, but up to now I have not managed to write an answer. It is a miracle that even now I sat down to write, because letter writing for me takes place once in a blue moon — especially writing in Bengali which I have not done for five or six years. The miracle would be complete if I could finish this letter and put it in the post.

First about your Yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your Yoga and I am willing to take it, that is to say to give it to Him who is moving by His divine Shakti both you and myself whether secretly or openly. But you must know the necessary result will be that you will have to follow that special way which He has given to me and which I call the integral Yoga.

What I began with, what was given to me by Lele, that was a seeking for the path, a wandering around in this and that direction touching this or that in all the old partial Yogas; lifting it up, taking it in the hands and scrutinising it and, having had some kind of complete experience of one thing, running in pursuit of another.

        Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition ceased. The Guru of the world who is within us gave me the complete direction of my path, its full theory, the ten limbs of the body of the Yoga. These ten years He has been making me develop it in experience. But it is not yet finished. It may take another two years, and as long as it is not finished, I doubt if I shall be able to return to Bengal. Pondicherry is the appointed place for my Yoga siddhi, except one part of it — that is, the action. The first centre of my work is Bengal, although I hope that its circumference will be all India and the whole earth.

I shall write to you afterwards what is the way of Yoga, or if you come here I shall tell you about it. In this matter the spoken word is better than the written word. At present I can only say that its root principle is to make a harmony and unity of complete knowledge, complete work and complete bhakti, to raise this above the mind, and to give it its complete perfection on the level of gnosis above the mind. The fault of the old Yoga was this, that it knew the mind and knew the Spirit and it was satisfied with getting the Spirit expressed in the mind. The mind can grasp only the division, it cannot completely grasp the infinite, the indivisible. In order to reach it, sannyasa, moksa, nirvana are the mind's means. One man or another can get this featureless Moksha, but what is the gain? The Brahman, the Self, God, are always there. What God wants in man is to embody Himself here in the individual and the community, to realise God in life. The old way of Yoga would not make the harmony or union of the Spirit and life. It dismissed the world as Maya or a transient Lila. The result has been the loss of the power of life and degeneration of India. It is said in the Gita "These people would perish if I did not do works" and in fact the people of India have truly gone down to ruin. What sort of spiritual perfection is this, that some Sanyasins and Vairagis should be saintly, perfect and liberated, some Bhaktas should dance in restless ecstasy or love and emotion and Ananda and a whole race should become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep Tamas; one must first get all the partial experiences on the mental level, flood them with the spiritual delight and illumine them with the light of the spirit and then rise above. If one cannot rise above, that is, to the Supramental level, it is hardly possible to know the last secret of the world. The problem of the world does not get solved. There, the ignorance of duality between spirit and matter, the spiritual truths and life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Lila of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. There it becomes possible to fully know and fully possess God — as it is said in the Gita, "To know Me integrally".  

The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and Ananda, these are the spirit's five levels. The higher we rise the nearer we get to the condition of the highest perfection of Man's spiritual evolution. By rising to the supermind it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. There is a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and Infinite Ananda. Not only in the timeless Akshara Brahman, but in the body, in life, in the world. The full Being, the full Consciousness, the full Ananda, blossoms out and takes form in Life. This is the central clue of my Yoga, its fundamental word. 

This is not easy to do. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this Siddhi is complete I am absolutely certain that God will through me give Siddhi of the Supermind to others with less difficulty. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in God's appointed time, I am not disposed to run widely and leap into the field of work in the strength of my little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but God's. I will listen to no other's call. When God moves me then I will move.

I knew well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not real change. Still it was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old Yogas and exhausting their sanskaras, extracting the essence and fertilising the soil. At first it was the turn of Vedanta: the Advaita, Sannyasa, Shankara's Maya etc. What is now taking place is the turn of the Vaishnava Dharma — the Lila, love, intoxication of the emotional delights. The merit of Vaishnava is that it keeps a connection between God and world and gives a meaning to life. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. It is the nature of the mind to take the part and call it the whole and to exclude all the other parts. The Siddha who brings the Bhava, although he leans on the partial Bhava, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral, even though he may not be able to give it form. The bundles will open of themselves. All these are the signs of the incompleteness and unripe condition. I am not disturbed by it. Let the spiritual power play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as there may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or embryonic condition. It is the previous hint, not even the beginning.

I do not want a society founded on division. I want a Sangha which is the image of spiritual unity and founded on spirit. You will say, what is the need of a Sangha I will be free and remain in every vessel. Let all become one without form, let whatever must be happen in the midst of the vast formlessness. That is true but only one side of the truth. Our business is not with the form-less spirit. We have to keep life in motion. There is no effective motion of life without form. The taking of life by the formless, the assumption of name and form is not a caprice of Maya. It was needed. We do not want to leave anything of the world. Politics, industry, society, poetry, literature, art, will all remain. But we shall have to give them a new soul and a new form.

Why have I left politics? Because the politics of the country is not a genuine thing belonging to India. It is an importation from Europe and an imitation. At one time there was a need of it. We also have done politics of the European kind. If we had not done it the country would not have risen from its sleep, and we too would not have had the gain and full development of experience. There is still some need of it, not so much in Bengal as in the other provinces of India. But the time has come to no longer extend the shadow but seize on the reality. We must get to the soul of India and make all its works in the image.

People now talk of spiritualising politics. Its result will be, if there be any permanent result, some kind of Indianised Bolshevism. To that kind of work also I have no objection. Let each man do according to his inspiration. But that is not the real thing. If one pours his spiritual power into all these impure forms — the water of the causal ocean into raw vessels — either that raw thing will break and the water be spilt and lost or the spiritual power will evaporate and only the impure form remain. In all fields it is the same. I can give the spiritual power but that power will be expended in making the image of an ape and setting it up in the temple of Shiva. If the ape is made powerful by the putting of life into it he may play the part of the devotee Hanuman and do much work for Rama, so long as that life and that power remains. But what we want in the temple of India is not Hanuman but the God, the Avatar Rama Himself.⁹ 

I can mix with all, but in order to draw all into the true path keeping intact the spirit and form of our ideal. If we do not do that, we shall lose our direction and the real work will not be done. If we remain individually everywhere, something will be done indeed, but if we remain everywhere, as parts of a Sangha, a hundred times more will be done. As yet that time has not come. If we try to give a form hastily, it may not be the exact thing we want. The Sangha will be at first an unconcentrated form. Those who have the ideal will be united but work in different places, afterwards giving it some form like a spiritual commune and making a compact Sangha. They will give all their work a shape according to the growth and need of the age, not a bound and rigid form, not an acalāyatana but a free form which will spread out like the sea, take different wave-forms and surround this, over flood that and take all into itself. As we go on doing this there will be established a spiritual community. This is my present idea. As yet it has not been fully developed. All is in God's hands, whatever He makes us do that we shall do.

You write about the deva sangha: "I am not a God, I am only some much hammered and refined iron". No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognise that there are great and small Adhars (vessels). I do not accept as accurate your description of yourself. Still whatever the nature of a vessel be, once the touch of God is put upon it, once the spirit is awake, great and small, all that does not make much difference. There may be more difficulties, more time may be taken, there may be difference in the manifestation, but even about that there is no certainty. The God within keeps no account of all these hindrances and deficiencies. He breaks his way out. Not our strength but the Shakti of God is the sddhaka of this Yoga.

Let me tell you in brief one or two things about what I have long seen. My idea is that the chief cause of the weakness of India is not subjection, nor poverty, nor the lack of spirituality, nor dharma but the decline of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the Motherland of knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to think, thought incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages this state of things is now the sign of terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. In the modern world it is the age of the victory of knowledge. Whoever thinks most, seeks most, labours most can fathom and learn the truth of the world, gets so much more Shakti. If you look at Europe, you will see two things, a vast sea of thought and the play of a high and rapid and yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe is in that. And in the strength of that Shakti it has been swallowing up the world like the tapasvī of our ancient time, by whose power even the Gods of the world were terrified, held in doubt and subjection. People say Europe is running into the jaws of destruction. But these revolutions and upsettings are the preconditions of a new creation.

Then look at India. Except for some solitary saints, everywhere there is your "man on the street", that is, the average man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti, only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the simple word. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; an ordinary labourer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But still there is this difference, that there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field its thought power no longer proceeds. There Europe sees everything as a riddle — nebulous, metaphysical, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still in Europe now some effort is being made to surmount even this limitation. We have already the spiritual sense owing to the merit of our forefathers and whoever has that sense has near at hand such a knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get this Shakti one must be a worshipper of Shakti. We are not worshippers of Shakti. We are the worshippers of the easy way. But Shakti is not obtained by the easy way. Our forefathers, swimming through a sea of vast thought, gained a vast knowledge and established a mighty civilisation. As they went on their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The speed of thought diminished and with it the strong current of Shakti. Our civilisation has become an acalāyatana, our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues any permanent resurgence of India is improbable.

In Bengal this weakness has gone to extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is first in India in all these qualities. If to these were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labour the Bengali might be a leader not only of India but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without big thinking, the results without labour, Siddhi by an easy Sadhana. His task is the excitement of the emotional mind, but excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of this malady, after it there comes fatigue and a tamasic condition. All the time the country has been gradually going down, the life power has diminished and finally what has the Bengali become in his own country? He cannot get enough to eat, or clothes to wear. There is lamentation on all sides. His wealth, his trade and commerce, his land, his very agriculture has begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the Sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the Sadhana of love — but where knowledge and Shakti are not there, love does not remain. Narrowness and littleness come and in a little and narrow mind, heart and soul, there is no place for love. Where is love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there, than anywhere else even in India so much afflicted by division. In the noble, heroic age of the Aryan people, there was not so much shouting and gesticulating but the endeavour they began, remained steadfast through many centuries. The Bengali endeavour lasted for a day or two in the system, and in all its movements. In the sea of Shakti the extension of the rays of the sun of knowledge and in that luminous extension the steady ecstasy of an infinite love, delight, and oneness. I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, empty of petty egoism, who will be instruments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the Guru. I do not wish to be a Guru. That at my touch or at another's some wake and manifest from within their slumbering Godhead and get the divine life — this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.

You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. You say that what is needed is the Bhava intoxication of feeling, to excite the country with the ideal. In the time of Swadeshi we did all that in the field of politics, but what we did is all now in the dust. Will there be a more favourable result in the spiritual field? I do not say that there has been no result. There has been. Where there is movement, there will come out some result, but it is for the most part of the nature of an increase or possibility and hardly to actualise it. There is not the right method. Therefore I wish no longer to make emotional excitement, Bhava, in any intoxication of the mind the base. I wish to make a large and strong equality the foundation of the Yoga and, established on that equality, a full firm and undisturbed Shakti.

What do they say? That this time a great light will manifest itself in Bengal? I too hope, still I have tried to show the other side of the shield. Where is the fault, the error, the deficiency? If these remain, the light will not be a great light and it will not be permanent. The meaning of this extraordinarily long letter is that I too am tying my bundle, still I believe that this bundle is like the net of St. Peter, all the catch of the infinite is crowded into it. I am not going to open the bundle now. If I do that before the time the śikār might run away. Neither am I going back to Bengal now. Not because Bengal is not ready but because I am not ready. If the unripe goes amidst the unripe what work can he do?

[Bold emphasis added above]

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Endnotes:

¹ 67 is the correct count of anniversaries of India's Independence in 1947, not 68. From the zero point of India's Independence to 15 August 2014, 67 years have passed. Considering it is the Vedic rishis from who our world inherited the zero point as the beginning or alpha point of the measure of our number system and of our movement in time, it is important to measure anniversaries from the 0. Link HERE for a full transcription (in English) of Prime Minister Modi's speech.
²  Maharishi means 'great seer'.
³  Part Four of 'Reflections on the Nature of the Real' is posted on PCU.
⁴  For more information on the subject and timing of the 9th Manifestation (beginning with the Age of Pisces in 234 BCE), see The Gnostic Circle by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet.
⁵ Aquarius itself is of the four "preservation" signs of the zodiac, in terms of the trinity of creation, preservation and dissolution  (rajas, sattva and tamas in the Hindu tradition). For more on this subject, see Secrets of the Earth - Questions and Answers on the Line of Ten Avatars of Vedic Tradition by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
⁶  Mandala 10, Sukha 191 is available online in Sanskrit at www.sacred-texts.com
⁷  From Sri Aurobindo's poem, 'A God's Labour', 31 July 1935.
⁸  These methods and measures are still utilized today throughout the world today in the form of the 12 month measure of the Earth's year, the 360 degree measure of the circle and our 0/9 number system, but they are utilized unconsciously, generating no knowledge of true self ˗ the One Self in all selves. If utilized correctly, consciously, the measure and rhythm of the year generates self-knowledge, soul-knowledge and knowledge of the whole, called soma or nectar of immortality by the Rishis. In many of her written works, Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet discusses how exactly these measures are to be applied or used, consciously, towards cultivating this so-called nectar or supramental gnosis, and why it is so important to accurately measure the zero point of our individual and collective journeys.  
⁹  Rama-Avatar was the 7th Avatar of Vishnu.