The Partition of India, its cause, its purpose - PART TWO

An analysis based on the new Indo-Centric Cosmology
3.9.2009 – 13.10.2009

The importance of knowing Destiny is that one does not seek to manipulate or mould an individual to fit a particular pattern that is not a suitable vehicle to express one’s destiny, or one’s dharma. More precisely, the purpose of incarnation is so that a harmony may be experienced in this universe between one’s individual time and space ‘coordinates’. However, the prevailing notion that birth is meant to provide a field wherein the individual soul can escape from these principles is false. It is an illusion we are saddled with so that we continue to serve as fodder in the great machine of evolution. But after the developments of the last astrological age, the only ‘truth’ spirituality teaches us is escape in one form or another. We therefore enter life with the sole objective of liberation from life, particularly from life on Earth – surely a rather incongruous situation: take birth to escape birth. This objective may be vehemently denied; nonetheless, if we probe deeply enough into the tenets of every religion or of every spiritual path the end result is the same: escape. We are encouraged to accept that the purpose of birth – at least on planet Earth – is to eventually reach a state where we are never born again. This ‘field’ is simply for expiation of one’s sins or the payment of accumulated karmic debts, – and little more.
Those who apparently revere the Earth as an embodiment of the Goddess herself are the most likely to protest at the above. But let us take one particular path as an example, Tantra. Surely if there is any spiritual discipline that qualifies for Earth-centredness it would be Tantra insofar as it does not reject the fetters of the human species but rather seeks to utilise them to attain the supreme goal of that path. Even more to the point is that extreme branch of Tantra, Aghora, which dives into the most abject of human conditions and embraces them as the means to attain the highest reaches of that particular discipline. Yet, once again if we probe deeply into Aghora/Tantra and its goals we see clearly that similar to the rest of Indian spirituality and the world’s most famous religions, though the ways of the Earth are embraced and used for release of the Kundalini, the ultimate goal is that She reach the highest chakra¸ the Sahasrapadma, located, significantly, OUTSIDE the body. The message is clear: the ultimate realisation is attained once one has found liberation from these bondages. The human condition may be accepted in Tantra, but the goal is likewise to pay one’s karmic debt and finally attain the supreme realisation when the Kundalini reaches a point outside of the body. Most do not question the incongruence of this position. Perhaps it is time to do so given the gravity of the situation we face collectively, especially in India.
The carrot dangled before us in all these quests is the promise of ‘heaven’, of everlasting peace and well being – somewhere, but certainly not on Earth. This home of ours has known nothing but rejection for the past several thousand years. Is it any wonder that we have succeeded in bringing civilisation to the brink of complete annihilation? Of course not. All is perfectly as it should be.
There is an individual destiny and also a collective destiny. For the individual the method used to probe the depths of one’s purpose on Earth in any given lifetime is the natal horoscope. For millennia tradition has remained unchanged in the construction of a person’s birth chart. One simply reproduces the condition of the surrounding cosmos at the exact time of birth when the first independent breath is taken, and those resultant planetary aspects are seen to converge on a particular point on the globe which would be the individual birth in question. Regardless of the fact that the Earth and planets are known to orbit the Sun, which in turn orbits the galactic centre, the individual at birth becomes the centre of the universe insofar as he or she is the converging point of the circumscribing cosmos. The idea is to read the resultant chart of this convergence by the ancient Vedic laws of correspondence and equivalence, and to distill thereby significant elements of that individual’s destiny.
Regarding the collective destiny there is no such horoscope available for the simple reason that we could never agree on the ‘first breath’ of our planet, as we can for an individual incarnation. In this regard there is an interesting point to observe: in a sense the urge of astronomers and physicists to pinpoint the beginning of time and the ‘big bang’, incongruous as this postulation may be in the higher vision, is understandable. In their own way scientists seek to know destiny. For many of them it is as obsessive as the human being’s insatiable thirst to acquire the same knowledge. Thus, admittedly this question of Destiny haunts us. The thirst to know the future has been an abiding desire from the moment the human being began to seriously ponder life’s mysteries, central to which is undeniably one’s purpose in taking birth at all when each of us faces ineluctable death. What then is the purpose in such an inescapable and seemingly fruitless pursuit? Why bother at all if at the end of our sojourn lies oblivion and nothing more?
Wisemen have filled the comatose-like gap by promises of a comforting afterlife. All, except the Vedic Rishis, have assured us that there is a better beyond and we need to use our time on Earth profitably so that we can reach that ‘heaven’ someday, somehow, somewhere. But is this what the Earth’s ‘horoscope’ teaches us?
The obvious next question that comes to mind is what that ‘horoscope’ might be when there is no ‘first breath’ and hence no Zero Point (lagna) that can allow us to make the Earth that indispensable centre or convergence point which every horoscope must bear if it is to be dynamic or perfectly balanced in time and space and therefore in rhythm with a dynamic universe? The Bhagavad Gita provides the answer. Sri Krishna not only tells Arjun that Vishnu’s emanations, such as he is, come yuge, yuge, but he shows him how that Power works (Chapter 11); at which point the tender-hearted warrior recoils. He cannot bear the vision of the mightiest God of all – Mahakala, the Great Time. Nonetheless, that vision is the supreme Rahasya of the 8^th Avatar. The secret of secrets is that only through the successive births of Vishnu’s Evolutionary Avatars can that true and not imaginary Zero Point (ayanamsha) be known which alone reveals the collective destiny, which alone allows us to cast the Earth’s own ‘horoscope’.
In any natal horoscope the individual becomes the converging point or the centre onto which the harmonies of the cosmos are projected. He or she is the ‘centre’, without which there is no order and certainly no starting point for destiny to begin to unfold in the trajectory of one’s allotted life span. The collective horoscope requires a centre for the same purpose. If we want to study the destiny of our planetary home we are obliged to ‘construct’ the Earth’s horoscope. Foremost is the detection of her ‘centre’ of any given age. Sri Krishna makes this clear: he comes from age to age. In this it is implied that only by the birth of Vishnu’s emanations of a special order and with a special cosmic alignment can that ‘centre’ be located. The difficulty lies in the fact that we are looking at long stretches of time – to be precise, more than 6000 years between appearances. Tradition rightfully tells us that in the interim between the 8^th and the 9^th descents a Dark Age set in, a kaliyuga, just as the name implies. But that ‘darkness’ prevails only as long as the ‘light’ does not come. And this, succinctly, is the purpose of Avatarhood: his coming itself removes the veils, he discloses what had been occulted for millennia; above all he reveals that hidden centre, without which the Earth must surely perish. In fact, even his coming is not enough. In this particular Age of Vishnu salvation for the Earth lies in awareness, in knowledge – and not in a tamasic devotion born of ignorance.
In this 9^th Manifestation beginning in 234 BCE and lasting 6480 years thereafter, that Centre of the Earth is India. This is not an arbitrary choice of any visionary or sage; it has been so decreed from time immemorial and nothing can change that preordained role. But it is certainly not an envious position to hold. Being the centre simply means that all the problems our civilisation has been saddled with as legacy from the last astrological Age of Pisces are lodged in the destined Centre, drawn into the particular convergence of time and space which allows for those problems to be dealt with and through which, by the Laws of Correspondence and Equivalence, the entire Earth can be reached. Only what transpires in the Earth’s true cosmological centre can affect the whole planet.
Partition of this Body of the Mother therefore takes on a singular importance. As Centre it describes the condition of the Earth, her weakened condition, we must add. A preordained Centre such as Vishnu describes requires a perfect balance of energies for survival to successfully bear the burden of destiny it carries. Contemporary India after partition displays a Body where great gaps exist from where those energies find escape. It is as if the Mother’s arms had been severely disabled with the consequent loss of power.
To understand what exactly that balance might be and consequently what areas of the Body have been affected, and why, we must turn to cosmology for answers. It is the revelation of the cosmic harmonies for this 9^th Manifestation that discloses just what the contours and the exact dimensions of the Mother’s full and true body are, partition of which has caused and continues to cause such severe distress to the peoples of the subcontinent.

17 September 2009
© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Link to Part I or Part III

The Partition of India, its cause, its purpose - PART ONE

An analysis based on the new Indo-Centric Cosmology
3.9.2009 – 13.10.2009

It is a problem that may never be resolved, but it just refuses to go away. The scars it has left are too deep and the wounds beneath seem to have touched the core of Indianness. Over the past month in the national discourse the cause of those wounds has been exposed once again: the partition of India.

First we must ask what exactly was it that suffered partition? What constituted ‘Bharat’? We know from history that India was a conglomeration of kingdoms and princely states, which might allow us to draw the conclusion that there was never an India to discuss, at least in the contemporary sense given to the name. Therefore, the next question is what then does the title Akhand Bharat mean? What is this extended or greater India that was finally partitioned in 1947?
The result of the dismembering of Akhand Bharat, however defined, was akin to a civil war, similar to what the United States of America experienced on the road to its nationhood. Or else there was the case of Spain in the last century. Such schisms often leave irreparable wounds which never really heal. There will remain a section of the society that harbours harmful memories and deep resentment over the results: one side or the other must win if fragmentation is to be avoided as the ‘final solution’. When nations are left to their own devices the stronger section wins the day and thereafter ‘unity’ prevails, – or rather is imposed. On the surface civil strife is over; but beneath surface layers the poisons of resentment and revenge may remain; and this can be stirred up by vested interests at any time while the original causes remain unresolved. This was witnessed in the American Civil War. It was not until more than a century had passed that those twists or ‘knots’ in the national psyche were finally brought to the surface, fully exposed and then dealt with definitively. This was the profound significance of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. America confronted those recalcitrant positions over which a civil war had been fought and the root causes were finally dealt with. The indication that it was ‘a job well done’ was the victory of Barak Obama as America’s first black man to be elected to the highest position of the land. The people of America and the world understood that the wounds of the Civil War and subsequent strife were healed. This is the great symbol of Obama’s victory.
While we may view the tragedy of India’s partition in a similar light, we know that no such healing has taken place. It may be argued that precisely because of partition healing can never take place. America did not fall into the trap of re-designing her borders; nor did Spain. Whereas India did, as did Palestine during the same period. This unhappy circumstance came to pass because unlike India (and the Middle East) both America and Spain were sovereign states. India, on the other hand was an occupied civilisation, a civilisation that had already been devastated time and again over 1200 years of her ancient history by invasions and conquests of powers inimical to the native culture encountered in these incursions. Had India been truly ‘Akhand Bharat’ during the period when those invasions had occurred, it is unlikely that conquests and occupations would have resulted. Bharat would have had the strength to repel invaders, especially those who, for one reason or another, could not accept the foundations of Indian culture and civilisation because of certain recalcitrant and arrogant imperatives of their own.
These invaders encountered a totally alien philosophy and culture in India of old, as if it were another planet when compared to Europe of the Middle Ages. It needs to be borne in mind that the purpose of these incursions was to impose a belief system and way of life that was unknown to India of the Vedic Age. That is, the exclusivism of conquering forces and the ideologies they propounded was exactly what ‘conquest’ had meant in Europe when Goddess worship and pagan cultures were obliterated. Their demand was a uniform belief system that did away with the manifold manifestations of pre-Christian and pre-Islamic culture. Monotheism was sought to be imposed in one form or another, then and even now as a part of a hegemonic struggle.
Thus, India was not really sovereign during the last astrological age (234 BCE-1926 CE) because she had lost that inner strength to counter attacks from exclusivist forces and their designs of world domination. India has never invaded another country; she has never sought to impose, by force or inducements of various types, her civilisational underpinnings. This has been her greatness – but also her weakness; for the conflict she carries within due to this reticence, a legacy from her Vedic moorings, is still with her. It came forward fully during Partition and continues to haunt the nation, as all such unresolved wounds must do.
In the rise of fundamentalism the entire globe is forced to deal with a growing religious fervour that refuses to shake off its hegemonic tendencies and to accept the time-bound nature of its origins. Similar to the festering wounds that continue to contaminate the evolving collective consciousness of a society, there are those among the faithful who cannot move forward with the Time-Spirit and relinquish those moorings in which world domination had played such a significant part. Religion was a powerful tool to use in hegemonic struggles and often the lines dividing State and Clergy were hard to distinguish. When fundamentalism arises it is a strong indication that the time has come for all nations involved to find their place in an order where imposition of one ideology over another cannot be accepted. In this new age the Time-Spirit has set a different agenda for evolution on Earth; indeed, foremost is the understanding and lived experience of oneness, of unity whose embrace is by definition global.

While the bold and assertive nature in the power struggle may be easily observed, there are other forces bequeathed from the last age that are more subtle in today’s quest for a continued domination similar to what it had known in the past. But because it is less obvious this underlying zeal is more difficult to detect; consequently it is far more difficult to eradicate. If we are permitted a dispassionate assessment of the legacies the new age inherited from the last, it is clear that the conflicts across the globe which the world cannot seem to resolve can be traced to the ‘soil’ wherein their respective ideological ‘seeds’ were planted. Out of that ‘mix’ ideologies arose without a mechanism in place that would allow for an upgrading from time to time as demanded by the on-going thrust of the spirit of the age. Thus when displacement necessarily threatens as new ideologies arise, this appears to attack those very fundaments at the origin of the belief. In such a scenario fundamentalism is sure to raise its head as we are witnessing today; bold or subtle the intention is the same: to mould or to remake society into what it once was and in this way to remove the perceived threat of survival in a vastly changed world. To counter these trends, overt or covert, the call heard evermore frequently is for a new world order. However, unless we are allowed to impartially study root causes of any malaise – and certainly there are many – how can a new order come about that differs from a past which continues to inject its undissolved poisons into the atmosphere where precisely we are meant to establish the new?

To return to Akhand Bharat, firstly, how is it to be defined? If Partition occurred and still inflicts injury on contemporary Indian society, there had to have been a sense of Bharat covering those very areas that were carved out of the Body of the Mother. But many argue that Mother India was never a united stretch of land and that this ancient ‘unity’ is fictitious and did not actually come about until the British took and retained possession of India for over 200 years. In a sense this is true. Great Britain’s conquest and the Raj it imposed had an important purpose, though this may be a point of contention for many nationalists and historians: it was to prepare the subcontinent to enter the new age as a political united whole. It did not matter that this wholeness was the result of foreign occupation because the Zeitgeist’s own purpose was to allow a sense of India to be consolidated in the consciousness of the people of the land according to the demands of contemporary society, whatever the creed, the class, the caste or the sect. And this did come to pass. As such, it was fully in keeping with the spirit of the times. The stage had been set for that ‘new order’, Indian style.
Whatever hidden motives the play of circumstances fostered, through invasions and conquests India found herself at the start of the new age (1926) to be a repository of numerous unresolved problems, precisely those that are creating havoc across the globe today.
The partitioned state of India displays unmistakably those recalcitrant legacies from the former age that refuse to move along with the times and the demands for a spirit of unity and oneness. The history of partition is well documented and need not detain us. However, in these days there has been a rehashing of the events and the participation of individuals who are deemed to have caused Partition. What has resulted from this tumultuous rehashing or revision of history is to note just how wounding and unresolved Partition has been. Many would like to forget that it ever occurred: the past is the past, let’s move on and somehow find peace with our neighbours. Indeed, this has been the policy of every government since Independence. However, the truth is that we cannot find ‘peace’ when unresolved issues remain; and we must have the courage to face those problems primarily by introspection, by going within. Moreover, India’s neighbours have their own unresolved issues which continuously erupt to haunt us all, lest we forget the oneness that embraces the subcontinent regardless of our contemporary borders.
The call of the hour is therefore to examine that ‘within’. What do we mean by India? If we are to deal with the cause of Partition we must examine what was partitioned in the first place. But before all else, we must penetrate even more deeply in our quest to the point where we understand the destiny of India as something quite different from the rest of the world. For India is the centre of the New Age. This means that though the Middle East was partitioned similar to the Indian subcontinent and by the same colonial power, this historical circumstance cannot be compared to India’s case where a different perspective has to be used to assess what on the surface only may appear similar. The Middle East played a significant role in the last astrological age (234 BCE-1926 CE); but its time of central significance has passed. Whatever ‘resolution’ is found to the problems of Palestinians and Jews will not have a bearing beyond that geographical location. Whereas, India being the new age’s centre it is only from this point on the globe that problems can be resolved which have a bearing on the entire Earth. Therefore, unless those problems are resolved in and by India, there is little likelihood of that much-awaited age of unity and oneness to come into being.
In a word, the new world order is destined to arise in India rather than elsewhere. However, to perceive that newness with its universal embrace a very different faculty of perception must come to our aid which is itself the result of a consciousness of unity and oneness.

3 September 2009
© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Link to Part II