Reflections on the Nature of the Real – 4

The Embrace – at last!

Revolution, Indian-style

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
Director
 Aeon Centre of Cosmology
South India, 29.9.2014

Those who have followed my work in India since 1971 through a number of published books, and more recently also through blogs, articles and videos (aeoncentre1-youtube channel) online, can join with me in acknowledging that the Indo-American tie-up has been long overdue. I described its inevitability via perceptions gleaned on the basis of a new paradigm offered to the people of India and the world. For the first time we have at our disposal an Indo-centric applied cosmology as the background for our analyses that provides a very different understanding of world affairs, insofar as they were always viewed through the Euro-centric prism; but there are certain aspects to the current rapprochement that enhance our earlier perceptions. In this paradigm one of its outstanding features is the manner in which America is shown to form an axis with India in both time and space. To present factual examples of the applicability of the new cosmology, in Chapter 15 of The Gnostic Circle, entitled ‘The United States of America and India’, in 1974 I wrote the following, revealing far deeper commonalities between the two than simply the largest and oldest democracies:

The United States of America is of course a very important element in the Earth’s evolution at present. Together with India it forms the evolutionary axis of Cancer and Capricorn that has often been referred to in this text. Capricorn [Makar] is India’s occult sign, and Cancer is the Sun sign of the United States [based on its July 4th independence date]; these together represent the axis of Spirit and Matter which is now carrying the evolution. It is around these two nations that the future of humanity’s growth into a more divine species largely depends. Both must pass through ‘labour pains’ as described for Tibet. India must become ‘materialised’ and the United States must awaken to the Spirit. If neither of these fulfils its destiny there is no possibility of a transformation on Earth. It is also essential that the two nations realise their union and come to the point where they shall work in harmony with one another in order that the new reign upon Earth can become established, for it is no coincidence that Columbus in 1492 thought he had reached India in his travels and called the natives of the land Indians… (p.181)

Following the publication of The Gnostic Circle in 1975 this theme has run through all the discoveries I have made since then; there was nothing to change that perception – rather, it has been enhanced over the years. I had even written to leading politicians of the day in the same vein, notwithstanding the compunctions of the Cold War and the fact that Richard Nixon had just a few years earlier sent the 7^th Fleet into the Bay of Bengal in support of Pakistan in its war against India and the rebellion of its then eastern wing.

      …I spoke to you of the necessity of India and the USA coming closer. The reason for making such a statement is not some sentimental fantasy on my part, rather it corresponds to a cosmic working which, when realised, would signify the ultimate victory of Truth. To explain briefly: India and USA form a ‘pole’, occultly, cosmically and physically. This is the pole of Spirit and Matter, respectively. To those who have an inner vision of things this is obvious, but I must point out that this Pole is a world reality as well. India is of the sign Capricorn; the USA is of the sign Cancer. These are opposite signs and this would make them complements in this ‘occult’ pole. Yet this Pole is what I have called the ‘Axis of Evolution’, for it is also the very axis of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. In July, the month of Cancer, the Earth moves farthest away from the Sun. In January (Capricorn) it is closest, and this becomes then the physical axis of the orbit and hence of the evolution. We see that even in the development of our 20^th Century civilisation this has been the case. USA is the prime representative of the materialistic consciousness, of Science, of Matter. India is the prime representative, as she has been for aeons, of the Spiritual Reality, and this has been her major contribution to the world. But we must understand that Spirit and Matter are one, and it is the discovery of this oneness that the world is now experiencing. If these two countries would somehow come together in this understanding, support each other, and work in harmony and unity, it would mean that the Earth would be able to live through these trying moments and come to the true spiritual age that is before us. I must point out also that these two nations are also ends of the Pole that pierces the very planet we inhabit. They stand back to back on the globe; we could say, it is a question that now they must stand ‘face to face’ rather. USA must come ultimately to recognise the value of India and that only by giving it full support can anything truly great for the Earth be accomplished.
      The Mother has arranged things in a perfect fashion, for all the events help to bring this about. I feel that the fall of South East Asia will inevitably bring USA to reconsider its position with regard to India; it will be obliged to ‘court her’…otherwise…China? (Private correspondence dated 18.4.1975, published in Tenth Day of Victory, Volume 2, Book One, Aeon Books, 2014.)

It is one thing to jump on the bandwagon today when the efforts of past labours are bearing overt results. The most difficult part of the labour was completed long before India and the world realised what was being done, for it is not limited to India. It is important to review those efforts because they began in the late 19^th Century and continued through the 20^th, unbeknown to even close observers of the political or spiritual scenes, and have finally culminated in this 21^st Century as it transpires before our eyes in India and before the eyes of the world.
To illustrate, it was the labour of Vishnu’s 9^th Avatar, Sri Aurobindo, that made it possible for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare that ‘India would be clean by 2019’, in his recent public appearances precisely in the USA. He referred to Mahatma Gandhi in the context of his championing the cause of cleanliness – a clean India which we all deeply desire on more levels than one. However, Gandhi was in a sense jumping the gun because he did not go to the root of the problem – he could not, because it was not his dharma to do so. In his day the cleanliness situation was bad enough; therefore, he himself took on tasks traditionally reserved for certain sections of the society so as to convey the message forcefully. With the increase in population since then, the lack of sanitation and hygiene has become overwhelming. But it must be noted that while these efforts were necessary they could not bear results unless the root cause of the filth that India has become was addressed.
I have written extensively on this ‘original cause’, and since that was dealt with successfully over the past century and into this 21^st without interruption, one can rejoice today when Prime Minister Modi lauds Mahatma Gandhi and declares that he will take up the baton of cleanliness and sanitation, no doubt believing that it all started with Gandhi’s campaign.
What was the original cause?  If we follow the thread we will see that it was cemented in the spiritual consciousness of the civilisation over 2000 years ago; moreover, it lay 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.
This first cause 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. The arrival of Vishnu’s 9^th Avatar was due on the scene some 2100 years thereafter, during Vishnu’s gunaic/zodiacal period of Sattva/Preservation; more particularly, when the cosmic clock marked arrival at the borderline between the Age of Pisces and into our current Aquarian Age in 1926. From that point onward the stage was set on the subcontinent for all the elements to be put in place for India to play her destined role as centre of the 9th Manifestation comprising 6480 years – a duty for which she is eminently prepared: India is required to work out the dark patches in the collective consciousness of the subcontinent which are representative of the energy knots in the global consciousness, or in the aura of the Earth herself, if you will.
What was the original cause that finally, after two millennia, has come to be reflected in the filth that none have wished to see or to acknowledge as Prime Minister Modi has done, an individual aptly suited to the task, being born in the zodiacal sign of Virgo (see Chapter 6, The Magical Carousel, PNB, Aeon Books, where the characteristics of Virgo are embodied in none other than Miss Lily Spotless!)? 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.¹ 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. And it is eternal only because of this in-built method of renewal, because only by renewal has it escaped fossilisation.
In a nutshell, this is the task of the Vishnu Avatars. The national Epics describe the life and times of the 7^th and 8^th in the Line of Ten. Today we have the grace to be born during the period of Vishnu’s 9^th, Sri Aurobindo, some 6000 years after the last. The soil for his appearance was prepared by two spiritual giants of Bengal, just prior to his 1872 birth, Sri Ramakrishna (1836) and Swami Vivekananda (1863).  In The Gnostic Circle I drew the connection more emphatically, in the process revealing the remarkable consistency in these matters Vedic:

    …In the lives of these three there are significant dates which show us the important role they play. Ramakrishna was born with the Sun in Aquarius, in opposition to India’s new birth sign, Leo, and he left his body on August 16^th, just an hour or so after the date of India’s independence, August 15.²
    Vivekananda was born with the Sun in Capricorn, in opposition to the sign of America, Cancer, and he left his body on July 4^th, the date of the American Independence … Ramakrishna’s incarnation was necessary for India’s spiritual awakening, and Vivekananda brought the word to America and planted the seeds of Vedanta in that country. (Ibid, p.182.)

   
Only those who have experienced at close hand the labour of reversal, 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.
Bharat did survive and in spite of the degeneration could keep the thread more or less intact because of a system that allowed India to do so over vast evolutionary cycles of time – the Vishnu Line of Ten, backbone of Hinduism.
Conditions for dealing with what I have called a tendency in the human constitution were in place by entry into the Aquarian Age in 1926 – and this includes Partition, the contours of which began to take shape around that time. These conditions allowed for the 9th to begin the task of uprooting the cause of the decline. The task set before him was to reverse that trend and ultimately to extirpate the tendency of escape to realms beyond, entirely due to the state of incompletion of the human species. Therefore, together with reversal he had to establish in the evolutionary matrix what was lacking to cause the problem in the first place. This was the truth-conscious Supermind, the next level in human evolution. Each of Vishnu’s emanations has had a similar task – that is, the cementing of a particular feature of the human species in an ascending order, because of which Sri Aurobindo called the Line of Ten a parable of evolution. The consequence in India of the tendency to focus on the Beyond away from our planetary base, and thereby bringing about a de facto split between Spirit and Matter, was that the energies of hundreds, if not thousands of realised beings upon which the transformation of the human species depends, were withdrawn from the evolutionary drive. Eventually this withdrawal percolated through all the planes of consciousness down to the physical, the abandonment of which resulted in what we see today. The new, post-Vedic postulation was, simply put, all that is in motion – ergo, the material universe – is mere illusion. Up there in the Self, in the Spirit lies the only reality – a proposition significantly boosted by contemporary particle physics. Bharat thus lost a grip on the physical dimension. It was just a question of time before that physical would be abused to the intolerable level we witness today. Is it not incongruous that the nation acknowledged to have reached spiritual peaks as no other should also hold the distinction of today being the filthiest? India’s ruling zodiacal sign can perhaps give us the answer in its mystic imagery. Capricorn is depicted as the mountain goat with the tail of a fish. This image conveys the connected heights and depths. The time has come to reach a deeper understanding of the symbol when we learn that Capricorn is the sign of the Earth’s soul.

No one now sees the filth; it is just the way things are because it has been a slow and steady decline over centuries. Another aspect of the abuse is corruption, perhaps worst of all; it too is now just the way things are. For there is no store of those finer spiritual energies available, accompanied by the purposefulness required to eliminate the evidence of this abandonment. It is as if a gap exists in the human constitution through which energies are seeped away. This has allowed the physical body of Bharat Mata to display the problem for all those who have the courage to search beneath the surface debacle and reach what Sri Aurobindo called, a falsehood planted…at the very root of things, in his poem, ‘A God’s Labour’,

…A voice cried. ‘Go where none have gone!
    Dig deeper, deeper yet
Till thou reach the grim foundation stone
    And knock at the keyless gate.’

I saw that a falsehood was planted deep
    At the very root of things
Where the grey Sphinx guards God’s riddle sleep
    On the Dragon’s outspread wings.

I left the surface gods of mind
    And life’s unsatisfied seas
And plunged through the body’s alleys blind
    To the nether mysteries.

I have delved through the dumb Earth’s dreadful heart
    And heard her black mass’ bell
I have seen the source whence her agonies part
    And the inner reason of hell.

Above me the dragon murmurs moan
    And the goblin voices flit;
I have pierced the Void where Thought was born,
    I have walked in the bottomless pit…

By undoing that knot the rest could then find its place. Well meaning souls could shout till the proverbial cows come home, but until the labour of the 9^th was completed, no efforts could bring concrete results.
This work is done; the reversal stands cemented in the evolutionary matrix. In February of 2014 the final ingredient was added to the alchemy and the sacred labour was completed. A Zero-Seed was planted within the prescribed harmony of Time and Space so that, through the Vedic laws of equivalency and correspondence the poisons in the Earth sheath of the past 300 years, further compacted into 30 years, to be further condensed, by the same laws, into 3 years, and finally 3 months (February to May) – were at last extirpated from the body of the Mother that is Bharat. The external evidence was that for the first time since 1984 – precisely 30 years ago – majority rule resulted from the electoral process on May 26, 2014, a majority none expected. This was the signal of a job well done behind the scenes, so to speak; the surface, in a connected, seamless consciousness, displayed this accomplishment, to remind us once again of that underlying drive with a purpose. This is not an unconscious, mindless creation and evolutionary process: there is a divine Purpose at the root of everything material and spiritual. Thus, that compacted Vedic Zero-Seed planted at a specially selected geographic position, directly aligned with the physical source of Ganga, was a womb which, like the poison accumulated in Shiva’s throat at the great Churning, served to gather within itself the compacted poison of centuries and, once and for all, cast it out of the body of the Mother, rendering it truly sacred again.
These are facts not theories or idealistic imaginings. When the Avatar’s labour covers all four dimensions – spiritual, mental, vital, physical – only then can we proclaim the work to be done, the direction to be reversed irrevocably; and the actors are now in place who can carry the fruit of that hidden labour into the dimension that people the world over can relate to: the material plane of the physical consciousness.
This is India’s response to the Aquarian wave that has swept across the globe awakening the masses to their rightful place beneath the Aquarian Sun. It is a revolution Indian-style. In this context, the coming together of America and India is not left to governments alone. The driving force in response to the Aquarian ideal is the people of both nations, and all nations. This was amply displayed in Madison Square Garden on 28 September 2014, a drive that extends well beyond the confabulations of the governments of the day. Exactly 43 years ago on this very date the final ingredients were drawn into India to assure this great victory of the people of both continents as an inevitable consequence the gnostic wheel of Time sets in motion when its divine purpose is accepted as a legitimate part of the Earth’s fulfilment. Today one leader plays the role the Divine Shakti commands, tomorrow it will be another. Her will prevails and we are blessed to participate in the manifestation of her Power that we have just seen Indian-Americans display in the United States of America.

_____________________________

¹  Most would find it hard to accept that the origin of the need for a cleanliness drive could be connected to the concept of Nothingness, a quotient of the Nirvana realisation of over two millennia ago; or to what 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.

²  Sri Aurobindo’s birthday, 15.8.1872. 

A Cosmological Perspective – 4

India’s tumultuous road to Centre-hood
Part I

[Link to A Cosmological Perspective - 1]

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology

July 2014

1975 marked a formidable turning point in the life of newly-independent India. History records it as perhaps the period of greatest threat to the fledgling democratic system adopted at the time the British Raj came to an end. That apart, the new Indocentric Cosmology sees 1975 – and more particularly the Emergency declared by the then prime minister Indira Nehru Gandhi – in a different light. Certainly there were threats of a very serious nature, but these were not only of a conventional sort as the surface phenomena would cause us to believe. Beneath the surface great forces were engaged in a global struggle to arrest the forward movement of India to express, for herself and for the world, the new and unique way she is destined to introduce. The threat was precisely to send her on a path that would cement the old rather than the new. These were forces that were unsuccessful at usurpation during World War II (see A Cosmological Perspective 3). With India as an independent nation, their efforts were this time more direct.

As the third member of the Lunar Line (see The New Way, Volumes 1&2, Aeon Books, 1981 regarding the Solar and Lunar Lines), Indira Gandhi could only follow the path her birth as a part of the Line had established. Ostensibly this was an affront to democracy; however the full story was another. The Emergency, temporary as it was meant to be, served to keep the movement going forward that India was spearheading for the world, using the only means possible at that immature state of the nation’s polity, given the totality of conditions prevailing and the personality traits of the then political leaders. For the fact remains that the contours of that new way had not yet been fully formulated, much less cemented in the nation’s time fabric by the lived collective experience.

Inertia is the tool to impede that fulfilment. In other words, to arrest or thwart the forward direction by securing that secondary concerns would become all-consuming while the greater purpose or dharmic duties are subsumed by peripheral issues. This too has its value as a strategy during a certain preparatory period. What was being prepared for India was then barely in its initial stages, though to be noted is that in 1971 an acceleration had set in to bring the nation to the threshold of monumental changes for herself and for the world. While civic liberties were thwarted, the need of the hour was to combat Inertia by the means then available, as a temporary measure, the imposition of which would ultimately be to strengthen the polity in a manner consistent with the new manifestation for India: with maturity of the polity, never more would such drastic measures be required.

Much of the labour was done behind the scenes, as it were, in dimensions that the ordinary human eye cannot perceive. The forces that sought to divert India from her mission had to be dealt with by yogic means. These are not the topic of this analysis but are noted only to convey something of the deeper levels of energy organisation that effect the outer strata significantly, such as prevailed in the country in the first half of the ennead 1971-1980, which caused a state of emergency to be declared.

To this end there is a division of labour, shall we say, known to Bharat for millennia but never so meticulously planned and cared for in its unfolding and services rendered as in this 9^th Manifestation. Briefly, two ‘lines’ have been operating to carry the unfolding of certain higher destiny patterns to fulfilment. In the new cosmology they are called Solar and Lunar Lines. In this discussion of the Emergency and connected matters, we are concerned only with the Lunar – that is, with the visible, external workings; occulted activities, determining as they may have been and continue to be, belong to the Line of the Sun and have been presented in detail elsewhere and need not detain us here (see The New Way, Volumes 1-3, Aeon Books). In the distant past these ‘lines’ manifested separately, as the nation’s epics inform us, with Sri Ram being of the solar and Sri Krishna appearing many years later of the lunar. They were known as dynasties in those times.

In our Age they are contiguous because the 9^th Manifestation completes a linear process which is now experienced spherically: In the Age of Supermind convergences of peripheral developments take place, bringing more rapid gains because of the simultaneity now possible, such as the overlapping work of the Solar and Lunar Lines. The goal is to reach the point where so-called negative methods will no longer be required to fulfil destiny. But that goal still remains to be attained in full. However, what has been achieved since 1971 is that positive AND negative serve the purposes of the centre, of the One, and are openly seen to do so. In other words, there is only one Dharma and everything that transpires under the control of Mahakal serves its purposes.

The Gnostic Circle, master key of destiny   

I began this series late in 2013. The first three parts followed one upon the other in December of that year. But this fourth and final portion had to be set aside to await developments in the nation that would provide the effective proof of what I seek to convey. For the first three parts I presented my Map of the 12 Manifestations as a background ‘canvas’ for the analysis. Aspects of the two World Wars of the last century were analysed on that backdrop to view those painful happenings in a very different light, one that would reveal their true purpose in the global unfolding. It was shown how each War played itself out according to the harmonies displayed in the Map, influenced by the then prevailing temporal rhythms. Regarding the topic under discussion, a different map-diagram must be used to bring greater clarity to the analysis, just as the Map of 12 had done. This time it is the Gnostic Circle as background canvas (below), whose 12 o’clock point is the onset of the new year according to the universal calendar in use throughout the world. In this instance it would be 1971 (=9) from which 0/9 point we begin the cycle of 9 years, until we complete the full measure of nine years/orbits and reach the start of the cycle again.  This is done on the basis of what I call the mathematics of unity – i.e. 1971=18=9, 1972=1, and so on.

The facts to follow are necessary technical details which may not be to the liking of many readers. Nonetheless, I am obliged to spell them out, failing which this analysis cannot proceed further. Briefly, this is how the Gnostic Circle operates. There are two divisions of the 360 degree circle superimposed on each other: 9 and 12. The 9 are the planetary orbits extending from the Sun (0) to Pluto (9) in their sequential order; the latter is the division of the ecliptic into the 12 signs of the zodiac. These two divisions are found in the innermost white area; the 9 planetary orbits are closer to the centre, the 12 signs in the next. (The coloured circles thereafter are simply further divisions of same 360 degree backdrop; they are not relevant to the analysis under discussion.) The time factor is captured in the planetary orbits  –  that is, each orbit is either a year or a day or an hour, as the case may be, based on the Vedic laws of Equivalency and Correspondence. Regarding the year, one round of the circle equals 9 years/orbits; added to the first round of 9 is another making 18, then 27, 36, and so on. In each cycle of 9 the horizontal 12 are ‘experienced’, in this manner wedding Time and Space in a unique applicable paradigm.

The Gnostic Circle

The Gnostic Circle, Aeon Books, 1975

 In contrast to the prevalent notion of planetary ‘influences’ regarding traditional astrology, the Gnostic Circle simply describes the role of harmony as experienced through the Earth’s evolutionary process. That is, life on Earth is tailored to these orbital harmonies which become tangible through the realisation of Oneness.

This ‘canvas’ was discovered in the mid 1970’s. The book of the same name was first published in August of 1975 (The Gnostic Circle, Aeon Books), just after the declaration of Emergency. The Gnostic Circle of the new cosmology makes it clear that at the time the Emergency was declared (1975=4), the world was passing through a section of the time-wheel corresponding to the orbits of Mars (4) and Jupiter (5), its nadir or lowest section. In the heavens what we find located between the fourth and fifth orbits is the Asteroid Belt. Since that section does not house a planet as such, it is known as the 4.5 Orbit, or the halfway point of the 9-year cycle. The Emergency was declared exactly as the world entered the Asteroid Belt (in Gnostic Time), the third such passage for the new India according to the spatial harmonies and temporal rhythms of the solar system, the patterns of which are reflected in the Gnostic Circle,

In a sense, the effect that this passage has in an individual’s life – for the Gnostic Circle is valid both individually and collectively – is to separate the wheat from the chaff. If the upward journey through the Circle is to be completed one cannot succumb to Inertia through ‘escapist’ tactics. These include techniques in spiritual practices which carry practitioners apparently out of the cosmic manifestation – in the Gnostic Circle this would be through the exit channel (the ‘void’) provided by 4.5 Orbit. The reader’s attention is drawn to its innermost structure where connecting lines between the planetary orbits are drawn; in esoteric schools the resultant diagram is known as the Enneagram. To be noted is the visual impact of the Enneagram, revealing that the pattern drawn by its lines points to the 4.5 Orbit; this is either the birth channel, or the escape route; it indicates the solemn choice the seeker is presented with during this passage. By holding material creation to be an illusion and ‘liberation’ to be ‘beyond time and space’, for instance, the remainder of one’s experience lived in time (as perforce it must be until we die) is undermined:  the concentrated energy generated in the spiritual realiser is withheld from the process that can impact evolution positively, thereby decreasing the store required for the transformation so urgently demanded if conditions on our planet are to be changed.

Other less lofty techniques are drug abuse, so rampant in societies the world over, coupled with many other psychological crutches and buffers to avoid a conscious and more responsible participation in the evolution.  After more than 2000 years of these various escapist methods, are we surprised at the depleted and ravaged condition of our planet and the rapid disappearance of her wonderfully diverse species?  These tendencies burden the human being with ‘excess baggage’ so to speak. To lighten the burden during the 4.5 passage, hardened crusts and stifling habits need to be shattered and dissolved, visually displayed by the actual Asteroid Belt. Once we have entered this magical time-wheel that is the 365-day journey of the Earth around the Sun (at the time of birth for the individual), and once we have accepted to follow the Sun and to complete the circle’s upward movement, rather than opt for the escape route, we can experience life more consciously by shedding veils that cloud the Truth-Consciousness. This heightened awareness comes through the rhythm the Sun establishes for the Earth – that is, on the power of its 9’pulsations’.

In the 1970’s scientists discovered that the luminary has a ‘pulsation’ of exactly one in every 2 hours and 40 minutes – totalling 9 in our Earth day of 24 hours – also referred to as an oscillation. That this should be such an exact measurement, on the order of a similar exactitude enabling eclipses to occur, it ought to inspire awe and even reverence in the hearts and minds of Earth’s inhabitants. However, this exactitude was not enough to encourage scientists to probe deeply into the mechanics and perhaps function of this mysterious pulsation. It seems to have been put aside and placed in the box already brimming with the conundrums left unexplained by Science.

From the perspective of the New Way, the exact 9 solar pulsations in 24 hours indicate that creatures born on Earth bear the stamp of 9 in their cells and in every dimension of their consciousness-being. This rhythm is one of our most intrinsic and essential harmonies. As individuals or as a collectivity we are destined to give it expression in an ever-increasing degree the higher up on the ladder of evolution we go. To this end the first prerequisites are the number system India gave to the world, 0 to 9, and the current universal calendar based on the Equinoxes and Solstices. The two combined and now employed across the globe indicate the advanced position we now occupy on the ladder. Along with other facts gleaned from the eternal spring of this specialised Knowledge, the indication is that India’s role in this expression is central. In the comity of nations she plays the role of the Sun, therefore setting this pulsation of 9 abroad across the globe as she moves through the cycles guided by the Time-Spirit. From this central ‘pulse’ the rest of the nations receive sustenance, provided India has taken full and conscious possession of her centre-hood.

© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet 2014

[Link to 'A Cosmological Perspective – 4, Part 2']

The Dilemma of Language

In this new series, Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet explores the new foundation of Knowledge established by the Supramental Manifestation and the 'imperative necessity to evolve a new language in order to distinguish it from traditional yogas and spiritual paths, a language that describes more faithfully the new experiences of the reality of our material world and the true foundations of this new consciousness that is being established on Earth, in and of time.' Readers are invited to consider how our modern society and its language is based on a deeply ingrained schism between matter and spirit which promotes the tendency towards escapism and severely limits our ability to recognize the true nature and structure of our reality and our evolutionary unfolding. Questions from readers are welcome.

 Question & Answer 1:

‘Finally, with that I could not resist and a couple of letters have gone ‘to the Editor’, but I doubt they will get printed. They are, as usual, too long. But what to do? I am constantly faced with an ‘educational programme’ without which I cannot transmit anything. Actually, it is a process of REORIENTATION, or rather of turning the whole thinking process inside-out. I realise that there is this contamination in the thought process, and unless that is cleansed no sense can be made out of anything true and real. One has to establish that basis first, then proceed. But for this reason it all becomes so long and drawn out. Yet, I know of no other way. What I foresee happening is that on the basis of this labour in future people like yourself will be able to BUILD on that renewed foundation, and then the discussion is shorter and more to the point because there is this accepted foundation. For now we have to battle against the falsehood of the ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ iron stronghold. Truly this has infiltrated everything and coloured everyone’s thinking. Wherever one turns it is there. I am trying to establish another basis for the discussion without which nothing of the new can take root. In the process we have to reverse things, thinking, bring matters to the point where this new way is accepted as a right foundation, equal in every way and better than the old seeing.’

From a letter to Girilal Jain
30 December 1991

Skambha, 8.4.2013

Q: Why haven’t Scientists studied Time like they have studied Matter? Clearly, from civilizations such as the Vedic and the Mayan, we see that the sages, upon whose wisdom the civilizations were built up, were well versed in the knowledge of micro and macro cycles of time. They understood that the evolution or development of consciousness on Earth played out in terms of vast ages which were ‘months’ of the Great Year (i.e. the Precession of the Equinoxes). Underlying this understanding of Time was the knowledge of the inseparable connection between Spirit and Matter. Our civilization seems to be built on both a rejection of Time gnosis and an acceptance of a split between Spirit and Matter. You have begun the process of restoring Time gnosis and studying it with the goal of fully realizing the unity of Matter and Spirit – realizing unity consciousness. This seems to be a task of great importance when it comes to World and Self-Knowledge, yet the vast majority of people, whether on the Spiritual or Scientific (Materialistic) side of the split, are content to ignore or negate Time altogether. What do you think it will take for people to become interested in fully integrating Time into their scientific or spiritual pursuits? What might crack this seemingly impenetrable wall of resistance that has built up over several millennium?

A simple answer to your question would be ‘the time was not ripe’ for a penetration into Time’s mysteries. I have pointed out in several of my more recent publications, as well as in the series The New Way, that this is India’s task, even as Egypt’s was the Space factor. But of course in the case of the latter, their approach was entirely different than what we would consider today to be a ‘conquest of space’. It has nothing to do with space travel, or even a speed barrier which would incorporate the latest findings regarding space at some level. The enormous difference is this question I keep returning to: the DIRECTION OF THE QUEST. For science today the direction is entirely different: it seeks for answers externally, so to speak. It is always looking into the past, never the present where the answers are to be found. In ancient times it was always an Earth-oriented quest.

We have lost the direction today. This loss lies at the root of most of our problems. I believe it arose with the idea that we must subdue the Earth/Nature. That has been the attitude for centuries – it seems to have been given religious sanction.

Returning to your question, to truly understand the role of Time the only way is through the ‘porthole/wormhole’ (!) of the present. Coupled with that is an understanding of Gravity. Having said that, we come to the core issue: The real mystery is and will remain gravity until Time is dealt with appropriately. Gravity holds the key to the Time factor. Science is unable to do that because of the obstacle its ‘tools’ present – namely its mathematics. Entry into that domain requires that the individual realiser undergo extreme compression (of consciousness), contraction almost to obliteration. Is there a scientist today who can do that?

In this 9^th Manifestation the task before us is ‘the conquest of Time’ – and it is in India that the path is being opened. You have rightly commented that in ancient times sages accepted Time’s important role; they mapped out its large cycles and were quite comfortable with the measure of aeons – in fact more comfortable than with the smaller details. This time we have to deal with the time factor as it unfolds before us. We deal with the larger cycles, but not disconnected from the day-to-day unfolding. This is because the consciousness of unity you mention comes about when the two axes (time and space) are harmonised. In philosophical/yogic parlance, it would be the integration of Being and Becoming.

India is the only country today that maintains a thread with that ancient ability to consider/ map out the passage of Time in large cycles. But India has also lost the key to the here-and-now. In so doing, it is also out of synchronisation with the larger because you cannot have one without the other. But at least it is a discourse familiar to the population. That is a good beginning. That ‘thread’ with the ancient way has been preserved here precisely for this present task.

The following article which was first published in The Vishaal Newsletter (1985) concisely explains the situation:

THE SPIRITUAL AND SCIENTIFIC CONUNDRUM

‘We believe that we are heading toward a new synthesis. Our role is not to lament the past. It is to try to discover in the midst of the extraordinary diversity of the sciences some unifying thread. Each great period of science has led to some model of nature. For classical science it was the clock; for nineteenth-century science, the period of the Industrial Revolution, it was an engine running down. What will be the symbol for us? What we have in mind may perhaps be expressed best by reference to sculpture, from Indian or pre-Colombian art to our time. In some of the most beautiful manifestations of sculpture, be it in the dancing Shiva or in the miniature temples of Guerrero, there appears very clearly the search for a junction between stillness and motion, time arrested and time passing. We believe that this confrontation will give our period its uniqueness.’  

Prigogine & Stengers,

Order Out of Chaos

It had always seemed to me that science, unlike spirituality, accepts the validity and relevance of certain cosmic properties such as time and space, which constitute our experience of material creation – indeed, which are fundamental to the emergence of a creation in matter. Spirituality, I had come to discover early on, denied any valid purpose and place to these aspects of creation. In fact, almost all spiritual paths can be summed up as methods devised to carry seekers ‘out of time’ (and space). However, recently I have had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with the pioneering work of the noted physical chemist, Ilya Prigogine, which has radically altered the idea I had of science. Progogine, I came to discover – with a certain satisfaction – is obsessed with time as I am; and moreover, he has the same complaint about science as I have regarding spirituality: its denial of time and the contradiction this introduces in its search for truth.

Let me quote certain passages from Prigogine’s interview with OMNI (May, 1983). The interviewer questions him about his methods of discovery and his early experiences as a scientist who was decidedly a ‘nonconformist’. What I shall quote will certainly convince the reader that in the world of science, Prigogine has faced the same resistance that my work faces in the world of spirituality, where my occupation with time is often labelled ‘unspiritual’ or ‘mental’.

Can you recall a particular moment when you had a flash of insight into a specific problem you were working on?

   

Well, I always remember with pleasure my first work on non-equilibrium thermodynamics, in 1946, when I realized that non-equilibrium might be a source of organization and order. I was very, very happy to have this idea, which has never left me. Perhaps in science, at some point, there is a close relationship between who you are and what you try to do. Science is a much less objective enterprise than often assumed. It’s true you need some tools. You need to write down your findings and convince yourself and others. But the driving force for new ideas has to be a deep personal involvement in the problems you’re working on.

Are you an intuitive person?

Oh yes. For me mathematics is only a tool to write down my ideas so that in the long run they can be communicated. I say ‘in the long run’ because in my history all of the ideas I have proposed have been poorly accepted.

What was the scientific climate like when you first began to study time?

Well, quite naturally I was interested in the reaction of well-known scientists to this line of research. Their reaction was uniformly negative. It was in 1946 or 1947 when one of the most famous scientists attending the lecture I gave stood up and asked, ‘Why is this young man devoting his interest to irreversible causes? Irreversible causes are just illusory. Time is just a parameter, so forget about it.’ I was so stunned by this reaction that I was unable to get up and respond. But I happen to be very stubborn; so I continued. Today the situation has changed quite a bit. Time has become an essential factor in elementary particles as well as cosmology.

You were a nonconformist, a dissident. How did you muster up the conviction to go against the prevailing ideology?   

I would say, again, this probably corresponds to a deep psychological element that isn’t easy to make explicit. The attitude of Einstein toward science, for example, was to go beyond the reality of the moment. He wanted to transcend time. But this was the classical view. Time was an imperfection and science a way to get beyond this imperfection to eternity. Einstein wanted to travel away from the turmoil, from the wars. He wanted to find some kind of safe harbour in eternity. For him science was an introduction to a timeless reality beyond the illusion of becoming.

My own attitude is very different because, to some extent, I want to feel the evolution of things. I don’t believe in transcending, but in being embedded in a reality that is temporal.

There is no need to go into further details of the work of this notable scientist. If desired, the reader can pursue the study via his latest book, in the English translation entitled, Order Out of Chaos, Bantam Books, 1984). I must point out, however, that in the above statements, Prigogine could be describing the attitude of traditional yogis or seekers on the spiritual path, and the ultimate goal they desire to attain. It is clear that, as Prigogine points out, even a scientist is necessarily influenced in his discoveries by the fibre of his own consciousness-being. Einstein, as probably all other scientists, was seeking a means to ‘go beyond’, to escape the cosmic and earthly dimensions, so painful and apparently unredeemable; just as the practitioners of yoga do, the seekers after nirvana and Samadhi. In the world of science it would appear, time and all that it engenders is an illusion. In the Commentaries on The Magical Carousel, Chapter X), I have discussed in depth this position, in particular concerning the theories of Einstein.

It is evident that the life and work of a scientist like Prigogine conspires to demonstrate that the crux of the human dilemma, lodged at the root of all the known spiritual enquiries and systems, was, in its later stages, transported into the heart of the scientific enquiry. This fact, somewhat of a revelation for me, demonstrates in a most emphatic manner that the real and only answer to this problem lies indeed in a synthesis that carries us beyond both science and spirituality.

In my article, ‘The Supramental Synthesis’, I referred to the Mother’s perceptions in this regard, which determined the beginning of certain insights into the new cosmology. Without referring to the details constituting each enquiry – the scientific and the spiritual – she made it clear that ‘something else’ was needed, that pursuing either way or method to its ultimate reaches would not suffice. Indeed, it is this aspect of the Supramental Manifestation that presents the imperative necessity to evolve a new language in order to distinguish it from traditional yogas and spiritual paths, a language that describes more faithfully the new experiences of the reality of our material world and the true foundations of this new consciousness that is being established on Earth, in and of time.

Yet, as the references to Prigogine’s work reveal; this action is certainly not restricted to any one sector or society or country, or any particular discipline in the quest for truth; or to any elite which, by virtue of its dedication to a realization of God as opposed to Mammon, entitles it to some privileged status. Rather, the Supreme Consciousness is working through inspiringly diversified channels. These may be few at present – all too few we are sometimes brought to lament – but nonetheless there are clear signs that an acceleration is in progress, and the Power is carrying us rapidly to new stages in the establishment of the supramental creation.

Prigogine’s comments expose a truly critical problem – inherent in both science and spirituality, and by consequence at the very root of the human malaise. This is the question of decay, degeneration, and ultimately death that all things born in time are subject to; the only secure fact of our human embodiment, it would seem, is the factor of an irrevocable march of time leading to inevitable death. From the moment of birth we progress toward our demise. The situation is so distressing and has reached such a desperate threshold that the utter purposelessness of such an existence – conditioned so thoroughly by the irreversibility of death – is likely to result in a global, collective suicide. The factor that stands behind and upholds the irrepressible arms race, for example, is this despair over a march of time that we cannot control, which moves us irrevocably toward a death we fear and can in no way avoid. This appears to be the sole purpose of birth.

Sri Aurobindo’s message to the world is the advent of a new way, an entirely new path for humanity. This path leads to a state of immortality. Thus the direction he provides is, quite logically, entirely different from all previous paths that sought in their entirety an escape from birth as well as death, an obliteration of the conscious Seeing Eye and a dissolution (nirvana) into the comforting transcendence of Nothingness. Though some fill this nothingness with fantasies of a blissful paradise, it is still distinctly ‘otherworldly’. But Sri Aurobindo takes us precisely into the core of this world of matter, and hence into the innermost recesses of time and not out of it. As Prigogine might explain it, ‘to be embedded in a reality that is temporal’.

Why is this so? Simply because if we speak of a transformation of matter as central to Sri Aurobindo’s revelation, then time is the indispensable ally in the task. His yoga rests in the secure womb of time, which in turn is the creative driving force behind evolution. Indeed, the last chapter of his The Synthesis of Yoga is aptly entitled ‘Towards the Supramental Time Vision’, which was to open the way to a formulation of his own yoga but which, as he stated, he had not had the time to present. He left us only with this hint that ‘a new vision of time’ would be a key.

Prigogine has described for us the reluctance of the scientific community to accept the place of irreversibility (the ‘arrow of time’, past-present-future) in its postulations. In the same light I shall now quote from a most interesting new publication on this very subject, consisting of dialogues between J. Krishnamurti and the physicist David Bohm. The book is very appropriately entitled The Ending of Time (Harper & Row, 1985). Of all the books I have read on this theme, certainly this particular collection of conversations offers the most dramatic revelation of the conundrum the world knows, engendered by the unwillingness of both the yogi and the scientist to face squarely the question of Time and find the true answer. What we have been witnessing throughout the ages is a shrinking from the problem and a maddening attempt to obliterate the individualised consciousness in order to step out of time and the entire universal creation – as if this were indeed possible – and thus escape the pain, the frustration, the exasperation that the certainty of death imposes and all the difficulties engendered by this ‘corruptible flesh’.

The problem lies in the fact that in so doing no attempt has been effectively made to understand what the real purpose of birth on this Earth, in this cosmos is. For surely the Supreme Consciousness that clearly upholds and controls the course of our lives and evolution, is not some impish, devilish, capricious God, who plays games with a hapless humanity to please and appease some insatiable sadistic hunger. Yet the way to learn what that true purpose is lies in a quest into time, rather than away from and beyond it, insofar as it is time alone that can reveal the sense of the evolutionary process.

What that sense is, Sri Aurobindo has indicated. Likewise, in my work with time via the practice of the integral and supramental yogas, I have been able to confirm those same discoveries. The present level of human evolution is a transitory passage to a higher poise. And rather than being a passage to death and total annihilation, our present Age is the glorious gateway to a splendid new future.

But it is time that offers this encouraging vision and caries us to this newness. Yet all the spiritual leaders insist that we go ‘beyond time’ in order to know God and attain liberation. Some do this openly, as we shall soon learn from the dialogue I will present between Krishnamurti and Bohm; others do it more covertly; and many without even realising that this is their aim. From The Ending of Time, the reader can assess how difficult a transition this is, and how utterly confused both the spiritualist and the scientist are at this point:

J. Krishnamurti: We have extended our capacities outwardly, and inwardly it is the same movement as outwardly. Now if there is no inward movement as time, moving, becoming more and more, then what takes place? Time ends? You see, the outer movement is the same as the inner movement.

David Bohm: Yes, It is going around and around.

JK: Involving time, If the movement ceases then what takes place?...Now if that movement ends, as it must, then is there really inward movement – a movement not in terms of time?...You see, that word movement means time. (pp.15-16)

Krishnamurti discloses here the correlation, quite logical, between time and movement. According to him, both must cease. In the course of his conversation with Bohm, he defines creation in matter, in particular in our physical bodies with all the elements they provide for experiencing life in the cosmos and on Earth, as being something of which we must rid ourselves. He makes this clear by distinguishing the mind as a property we must disconnect from the brain – the latter, the physical instrument provided for the purpose of enacting the commands of the mind on the physical plane (see VISHAAL 0/2), is hence thoroughly ‘in the mire’ as it were.

JK: My brain – but not my mind – has evolved. Evolution implies time, and it can only think, live in time. Now for the brain to deny time is a tremendous activity, for any problem that arises, any question is immediately solved.

…Now how are you going to open the door, how are you going to help another to say, ‘Look, we have been going in the wrong direction, there is really only non-movement; and if movement stops, everything will be correct?

…That is, mankind has taken a wrong turn, psychologically, not physically? Can that turn be completely reversed? Or stopped? My brain is so accustomed to the evolutionary idea that I will become something, I will gain something, that I must have more knowledge and so on; can that brain suddenly realise that there is no such thing as time? (p.18)

The next part of the dialogue specifically locates the conflict, which, according to Krishnamurti, lies between a brain that has evolved in time, and a mind that is supposedly free of time. Krishnamurti sees this as the root of the problem. However, as far as I can perceive, the conflict is not in a temporal/atemporal dichotomy, but rather in the fact that Krishnamurti is an embodied consciousness like all of us, inhabiting a physical body which is his instrument of perception and his means of participating in this evolutionary and spiritual adventure – and yet, this instrumentation is being wholly denied. To me, the problem is a perception that places us at odds with not only the bodies we inhabit but with out total habitat – the Earth and cosmic dimension. For time, movement, are the underlying truths of our world. What Krishnamurti is describing in this dialogue is the very problem I have been revealing as the root of the species’ extreme distress: the quest that is intended to carry us beyond this dimension we are born into, as the only means of escaping from a pain that we cannot understand in its true perspective and hence overcome within the legitimate boundaries provided us as an evolving species on this particular planet, Earth. And contrary to what Krishnamurti suggests, this is the attitude that is the ‘wrong turn’ humanity took; yet that very ‘wrong turn’ is precisely the remedy he is offering. That is, his solution of seeking to stop time and movement IS THE WRONG TURN, and it was taken many millennia ago, and is the focus of every spiritual discipline and religion the world knows.

The answer lies here, in time. Not out of it. Indeed, embedded deep in the core of time, as I am sure Prigogine would agree.

DB: But I think you are implying that the mind is not originating in the brain. Is that so? The brain is perhaps an instrument of the mind?

JK: And the mind is not time.  Just see what that means.

DB: The mind does not evolve with the brain.

JK: The mind not being of time, and the brain being of time – is that the origin of the conflict?

DB: Well, we have to see why that produces conflict. It is not clear to say that the brain is of time, but rather that it has developed in such a way that time is in it.

JK: Yes, that is what I mean.

DB: But not necessarily so.

JK: It has evolved.

DB: It has evolved so it has time within it.

JK: Yes, it has evolved, time is a part of it…Can the brain itself see that it is caught in time, and that as long as it is moving in that  direction, conflict is eternal, endless? You follow what I am saying?...Has the brain the capacity to see in what it is doing now – being caught in time – that in the process there is no end to conflict? That means, is there a part of the brain which is not of time? (pp.19-20)

The problem becomes acute when the exchange between these two eminent men produces these memorable lines:

DB: You see, to go further, I think one has to deny the very notion of time in the sense of looking forward to the future, and deny all the past.

JK: That’s just it.

DB: That is, the whole of time.

JK: Time is the enemy. Meet it, and go beyond it. (pp.21-22)

This represents the classic postulation of the theory of Illusionism, be this in the realm of spirituality or science. There is something fundamentally, radically, pathetically wrong in a quest that places us in the necessity of denial of our experience of life, in a body, in material creation. Conditioned by this particular vision, the only possible and logical conclusion is that existence on this planet is simply without a rational purpose. The exchange between Krishnamurti and the physicist Bohm, reaches such extremes that toward the end Krishnamurti has Bohm ‘agreeing’ that the universe is not of time.

JK: I am asking you as a scientist, is this universe based on time?

DB: I would say no, but you see the general way…

JK: That is all I want. You say no! And can the brain, which has evolved in time…?

DB: Well, has it evolved in time? Rather, it has become entangled in time. Because the brain is part of the universe, which we say is not based on time.

JK: I agree.

DB: Thought has entangled the brain in time.

 JK: All right. Can that entanglement be unravelled, freed, so that the universe is the mind? You follow? If the universe is not of time, can the mind, which has been entangled in time, unravel itself and so be the universe? (p.220)

It is certainly difficult to understand how David Bohm, a physicist, can reconcile his lifetime involvement of the study of physical laws, for which measure is essential and temporal studies are paramount, with this perception: the universe is not of time. Furthermore, these dialogues reveal a rather incomplete understanding of just what the universe is; for it is not only the dense material substance that we can know by the external senses, but consists of other subtler dimensions that are all contained in this ‘universe’. Mind and the planes which it rules are just as much ‘of the universe’ as the physical brain. And hence mind is also ‘of time’. While we are on this planet, the brain and mind must work together in order to provide us with an instrument that harmonises our consciousness-being with the laws of time and evolution consonant with Earth’s position in the solar system, a penetrating study of which reveals the purpose of this evolving species that has been so meticulously equipped with the proper instruments to allow for this conscient experience of oneness with our total habitat, in a continuous evolution toward higher embodied states of being.

I believe these extracts from The Ending of Time have demonstrated more clearly than any material appearing so far in the spiritual or scientific world that the root of humankind’s dilemma is this misguided quest, which over the millennia has sought to carry the human being in the direction beyond the lawful condition of his embodiment. Above all, it is the pernicious misinterpretation that the origin out of which material creation has emerged is a void of nothingness, and that this void, this nothingness is the ultimate attainment in one’s quest, which has done the most damage. This situation is poignantly conveyed in Krishnamurti’ s own words:

'…to be free of becoming? That is the root of it. To end becoming…. Of course, there is only complete security in nothingness!' (p.257)

To put it succinctly, this is nothing other than the denial of the Mother, of materia, of the fullness of that womb of creation, and that Vedic Divine Measure that the Mother laboured so intensely to unveil on Earth as the planet’s deepest secret and reason for being. David Bohm has recently presented his new theory of physics, the ‘implicate order’. In our terms, enfolding would be involution; and unfolding, evolution. But surely one has the right to question his position as a scientist, since all this ‘order’ implies the active participation of movement and time. It would appear then that we are here faced with a paradoxical split: on the one hand there are his statements in this dialogue with Krishnamurti to the effect that ‘the universe is not of time’, implying that time only exists as a distortion of the brain in one’s psychological experience, not elsewhere in the universe or otherwise; on the other hand, he presents a new theory of physics, an implicate order which demands the intrinsic instrumentation of time. This would appear to reflect the same dichotomy, and in some cases downright schizophrenia, that characterises the acute malaise of our times, discernible in practically every sphere of our collective and individual lives. Above all, with such a philosophy as one’s background, it is understandable that scientists are assiduously working to present us with greater and better means of total destruction. Why not? Insofar as it is all nothing but illusion in any case?

In concluding, this dialogue calls to mind the experiments carried out at the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute (1983), in which hypnosis was used to erase a person’s time-sense. A group of college students were given suggestions while under hypnosis that upon awaking they would have no past or future, or sometimes no time at all. The effect on these patients was most disturbing; some turned catatonic, others behaved like schizophrenics. The conclusion was that life must have a direction provided by its ‘arrow of time’ in order for it to be worth living; and that people who are given a present but without the past and future, become preoccupied with death and behave schizophrenically.

I feel that if one were to pursue the path laid down in The Ending of Time, the results would be similar if not identical to these experiments. While it is simply an intellectual exercise and remains on the level of philosophical banter, no serious harm is done. Nonetheless, when spiritual authorities encourage people to embark upon a quest of this nature – and Krishnamurti’s credentials in this regard are certainly some of the best – then the matter requires serious deliberation. It can be emphatically stated that these old ways, these obsolete perceptions that have been pursuing us like draining phantoms throughout the ages, can in no way bring us into harmony with life, as a civilisation, and above all, solve the distressing impasse in which the human race presently lives.

This is the Age of Supermind. Sri Aurobindo has often described the Supermind as the only reconciler of paradoxes. Are not Prigogine and Stengers in their book, Order Out of Chaos, anticipating the same advent when they write

‘We are now entering a new era in the history of time, an era in which both being and becoming can be incorporated into a single non-contradictory vision.’

The answer lies, as the Mother has suggested, in a third poise. Beyond both science and spirituality.

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology

© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet 1985