PURANIC COSMOLOGY UPDATED: The Partition of India, its cause, its purpose

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.

Link to Part I or Part III