Updating the Vedic Altar - Epilogue

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
November 21, 2011

[Link to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI,
Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part IX, cont., Part X, Part XI or Part XII]

If the measurements of the temple are perfect
there will be perfection in the universe.
The Mayamata, 11th Century

An interview with the noted historian Romila Thapar recently appeared in The Hindu (28.10.2011). The subject was the elimination from curriculae of the A. K. Ramanujan essay, ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’, which had caused consternation in many. Any sensible person would have to agree with the academician when she states, ‘Every scholar is required to question existing knowledge because that is the only way in which knowledge grows.’
This series on updating the vedi is a case in point. Some may protest – indeed as it has been done by N. S. Rajaram, and then Avatar Krishen Kaul, if not explicit at least implied – that my work is an attack on tradition, on Hinduism, and somehow in line with the worst elements of the colonial Raj in seeking to denigrate the native culture. But this charge, with slight variations, is even levelled by those whom we would expect to be ecstatic over my discoveries of the Mother’s genius in sacred architecture and its links to the Ancient Ones. Then there are those whose vested interests are threatened by my discoveries – the powers-that-be in Auroville – because I am exposing the fact that what they have constructed at the centre of the township, in the Mother’s name, is a shadow of the original. Every effort must be made to expose this fact for the sake of true and genuine scholarship, if nothing else. The day may come when people will have to make a choice: the Mother’s creation or its shadow. The day will certainly come when her original vision and plan will be accepted for what they are: the Vedic altar made new. But as we know, and we see it demonstrated today throughout the world, there are serious attempts to demolish those vested interests that are crippling not only the economy, but the spirit of the people everywhere. In the so-called spiritual world there are the same vested interests that Romila Thapar describes in the interview. However, in view of what I am presenting in this series – that is, the new vedi as proof of the existence and purpose of Vishnu’s Dasavataras – where can we situate Romila Thapar’s line of reasoning?
We know what the scholar’s political persuasion is and how it colours her perspective when she writes about the early periods of history. Though this differs from my position, one can only agree with her that eliminating the essay in question is simply bigotry and does go against earnest scholarship. She is right to state that diverse views should be presented to students and that teachers should be selected at the level of higher education who can explain the divergences and discrepancies adequately. Bigotry is now pervasive in all areas of societal existence. The cause is always the same: with the availability of media that can swiftly ‘spread the word’ to reach the people directly, a reaction arises and the result is a hardening of positions with the brittle polarity that is gripping the world. When the Mother stated that a third way was required beyond both science and spirituality she could have been addressing the concerns raised in Romila Thapar’s interview. But while the question of freedom and free speech must be addressed, we have to ask if that ‘third way’ would actually be allowed to surface in the midst of such hardened positions on both sides of the material/spiritual spectrum.
Within the confines of the Mother's own work, the ‘third thing’ that she prophesied would take shape (‘… the formula will come…’) did indeed manifest, and in her very Ashram. But no sooner had she left this plane than the ‘map’ of that third way beyond spirituality and science was destroyed. Not only was her plan for the chamber demolished within 18 days of its coming to light, the sole text in existence that explained exactly what she had achieved was also ‘shredded to pieces’ at the very press she established in her Ashram.
In the educational system an essay is eliminated because it ‘offends’. In the Sri Aurobindo Ashram a book of knowledge is destroyed because its contents are purportedly unacceptable. Romila Thapar makes the point that in all likelihood hardly any of those who voted to eliminate the essay had read it. This is exactly what happened with my book, The New Way, in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: those who took it upon themselves to shred it to pieces (not the then Board of Trustees, I must clarify), had never read the book. It continues to be discredited – as well as its author – without any serious scrutiny of the contents. Therefore I sympathise with Romila Thapar when she questions: ‘…how many of the voters actually took the trouble to read this essay when they were condemning it. [Many] people in the Academic Council had no idea of what the contents of the book were, except that they were going on hearsay…’
Only rarely is a book, a painting, a film, or any sincere expression of the creator’s ideology or sentiments worthy of ‘burning’. From what I write the reader might draw the conclusion that I agree with Romila Thapar, for example with regard to her position on the Vishnu Avatars as expressed in the interview. Of course, anyone who has taken the trouble to follow this present series alone knows that my views on the subject are entirely different. Romila Thapar states that the mythology in the Ramayana and the Mahabharat was ‘converted into sacred literature by making Ram and Krishna avatars of Vishnu; and there is a superb analysis of this by V. S. Sukthankar in Pune who talked about the Bhrigu Brahmins converting those epics into Bhagawat literature, that is converting the heroes into incarnations of Vishnu. And then it becomes sacred literature. Now, today, yes, it’s considered sacred literature but that is not really its roots.’
This series on the Vedi illustrates what those ‘roots’ really are of the Vishnu Avatars. It is in the cosmic harmonies that we find the real credentials and purpose of not only Ram and Krishna, but the 9^th and 10^th as well. I have stated time and again that Vishnu’s Line of Ten is the eternal backbone of Hinduism. Moreover, as this short series itself proves, the descent of the 9^th has been for the very purpose of re-forging that ‘backbone’ but within the context of today’s world and its exigency of science and academic approval. But will scientists, historians like Romila Thapar, and academics take the trouble to scrutinise these credentials and the body of knowledge they reveal. I hardly think so.
Thus as well-intentioned as Romila Thapar may be in her legitimate protests against the elimination of Ramanujan’s essay simply because it brings to light the many different versions of the Ramayana which, it is contended, hurts the sentiments of Hindus, I encourage rational scientists and academics to explore this Third Way to learn what exactly it is that remains steadfast in these many versions. The outer coverings may vary but the cosmic credentials never do. These are discovered by the Map of the 12 Manifestations that gives all the salient, everlasting details of the appearances. I have discussed these credentials on the backdrop of the Map in various published works apart from The Gnostic Circle and The New Way. There are two more recent publications: Kashmir and the Convergence of Time, Space and Destiny, and particularly important is, Secrets of the Earth, questions and answers specifically on the Evolutionary Avatars.
Finally, to prove a point, yes divergent views should indeed be presented to students; but then, should academia not be obliged to offer my work as a new ‘science’ of cosmic harmonies that can explore the Vishnu Line in a way that carries us beyond unquestioning belief or devotion which can be labelled hagiography and not solid scholarship? Obviously this will not be done; therefore are not Romila Thapar and her colleagues guilty of the same sin? Would she/they ever take the time to scrutinize this new ‘science’ so that once and for all the background of the Vishnu Legend can be verified empirically to reside in the cosmic harmonies which the Avatars themselves reveal by their very descent, and not simply left to the opinion of scholars or devotees? Scholarship must enlarge its scope and terms of reference to embrace the new third way; like everything else in this world at this particular crisis point, academia must rise to the occasion and understand why it is that it has become just another polarised ‘ism’, with no power to eliminate the deeply-rooted ignorance that assails the mental species.
From all sides of the material/spiritual spectrum the answer is a resounding NO. Vested interests plague our world in all societal expressions – political cultural, historic, scientific – and above all spiritual. In the latter, it is distressing to state, we find the darkest ignorance. I state this with deep sadness because in India, like nowhere else in the world, men and women of the spirit are the guardians of the greatest treasure trove of higher knowledge to be found anywhere in the world. Hinduism as a body is the repository of that treasure – but, sadly, ‘the soul of knowledge has fled from its coverings’.
If the time has come to expand the boundaries Relativity Theory has imposed on physics, we must realise that this expansion has to affect the world of the Spirit as well. There can be no neat compartmentalisation whereby matters of the Spirit are somehow left in a dimension that is unaffected by the happenings in this material creation of 9. Rather, it is well to realise once and for all that what we experience ‘here below’ is first lived in the more subtle dimensions to then cross the bridge to the material, as I have described in this series regarding the Mother’s vision. The difference now is that the ‘bridge’ has been forged between Swar and this material base, the direction of the quest for Truth has been reversed after a long period in which humanity had been submerged in darkness as if in a cocoon, in preparation for this unique crossroads of our collective destiny. Sri Aurobindo has stated the position clearly: ‘At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny…’ This implies that the expansion I refer to is the call of the hour in all areas of existence because indeed all is one. Fragmentation, the separative approach is what must finally be overcome in order to make the crossing that lies before us successfully. The stakes are high. It is either creation or destruction.

At this point, I wish to quote extensively from The Last Barrier, by the Sufi Reshad Feild¹ In his book, which has become a classic of spiritual literature, Reshad quotes his Sufi Teacher known as Hamid in the book, on the coming new world. Though dating from the 1970s, we cannot fail to realise that the ‘time of choosing’ Hamid prophesied is upon us:

‘Whenever anyone comes into true knowledge, a certain type of energy is released, made available for this great process of reciprocal maintenance. Normally this energy is released in sufficient quantities only during moments of great crisis, and particularly at the moment of death. But now we have reached the point in the life of the planet when we must learn to die to ourselves each moment, to be reborn each moment, to live and die consciously, so that the Earth may continue to evolve…
‘But it is those who have reached the knowledge of their essential unity with God who will forge the way and build a new world. Before this new world can be brought into being, however, it is said that there are to be two confrontations. The first confrontation will be between those who know and those who do not want to know, and the second between those who know and those who will have to know…
‘The choice that each of us must make is to surrender to God now, today, each moment – not at some nebulous future time when we will no longer be granted the privilege of choosing. But one way or another a confrontation will take place…’
‘…what will come about will be like nothing that has ever been before – not like any of the great civilisations of the past. I am speaking of a completely new way of life, and it is those with knowledge of Unity who must forge the way now. It is those people who can make decisions stemming from real knowledge who will breathe life and order into the New Age.’

In the attempt to bring some reasonableness into these matters of bigotry and intolerance based on a willed ignorance, I offered this present series to the Registrar of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. As I was composing each section, I realized again how pathetic it is that this, the Mother’s greatest achievement, could be rejected by the very educational institution she created. It seemed impossible. As an illustration of the problem this Epilogue highlights, I close this series with the text of my letter, dated 17 October 2011. There has been no reply to date. It needs to be stated that the Ashram the Mother and Sri Aurobindo created as a laboratory for their combined Yoga has become embroiled in court cases over the years after the Mother’s departure, none of which relate to matters that should be of the deepest concern to all involved. The latest case is a petition seeking to ban The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, by Peter Heehs, a member of the Ashram. The grounds of compliant, as I have been told, is the manner in which Heehs drags Sri Aurobindo to the level of mere humanity by divulging certain facts which, in the years of his service in the Department of Archives, he was privy to, and that these hurt the sentiments of his devotees. The complaint seems to extend even to the most widely distributed photograph of Sri Aurobindo. In his book the author presents the original together with the retouched version that was done to appeal more to devotees.
Such are the concerns of the members of the Ashram as it stands today, without any spiritual guidance and left to their own devices. But not one member has complained about the fact that Heehs dismissed the question of Sri Aurobindo as an Avatar of Vishnu entirely, though he was privy to the material I have been presenting on the subject to his Department over the years. This, in my view, is the only issue of real concern because Heehs’ denial, which would appear to be based on thorough scholarship given his position in the Archives Department, is the true issue to question. In view of my statement that I do not believe in book banning, except perhaps in extreme cases, and Heehs’ book certainly is not one of them, I dealt with the issue in the only way I believe appropriate: I published Secrets of the Earth, a compilation of questions and answers on the Vishnu Avatars. Ignorance must be dissolved on the basis of knowledge; and in a case such as this higher knowledge. I believe my book is a fitting reply to the Peter Heehs ‘heresy’, to hardened stands, to sheer unabashed ignorance that refuses to see. This is the blanket covering human consciousness throughout the world, in every sphere.
A new light must be allowed to dawn, new parameters have to be established.

Mr Manoj Das Gupta
The Registrar
Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education
Pondicherry, South India
605 002

Dear Manoj,

I have just completed writing and posting Part 9 of my new series, Updating the Vedic Altar, on our blog: www.puraniccosmologyupdated.blogspot.com.

Now we have decided to begin another website/blog with this series, especially for students familiar with Sri Aurobindo’s teachings; and so it will be mainly targeting this category of youth. It is actually a course in the new cosmology. More especially, it is to bring to their attention a ‘new science’ which can give them an understanding of what the Mother referred to as a ‘third way’, beyond both science and spirituality. The once-held solid principles of science are being overthrown daily. Students must be asking what it is that is ‘eternal’, if anything at all. What then is the sanatana dharma? At the Ashram School they should be eager to understand their Vedic roots more in depth, and what better way to do so than to follow the Mother’s guidance on this path of discovery.

I couldn’t help pondering over why this material is not made available directly to students at the Centre of Education. It was founded by the Mother, and yet the students there are not allowed access to her greatest achievement, which was to lay the foundation precisely for this ‘third way’. What interests me profoundly is the depth of her vision and its connection to the traditions of the Vedic Age. This can be factually demonstrated, as I have done in this new series. But again, I lament, this treasure that the Mother has bequeathed to us, is kept from the youth she would most have wanted it to benefit.

Time and again it is brought to my notice how much strife there is in her Ashram – one court case after another, one controversy after another. If these disputes were over important matters, vital to Sri Aurobindo’s mission, it would be understandable that energy and time should be put into these activities. But, in my view, this is often not the case. Rather, I see how easy it is to solve these issues based on Knowledge alone. This is entirely possible, but only if we accept the avenues the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have opened. There is no other legacy left to a spiritual ashram that can compare to what they have bequeathed. But, nothing is made of the full extent of this legacy. No one in their own Ashram is interested! I find this absolutely astonishing.

Manoj, here is a chance to step out of this rut and do something truly creative, breaking through resistances that have little justification and are simply blocking the Mother’s work in the world. It has been blocked in Auroville, but why leave the students of the Ashram School closed to her achievements which are truly astounding? I sometimes wonder if it is her gender that stands in the way; and that if it had been Sri Aurobindo (male and Indian!) who had achieved what the Mother did with her ‘updated Vedic Altar’, for instance, the whole of India would have fallen at his feet – for such is the grandeur of her legacy.

I am enclosing the first 9 parts of the on-going ‘Updating the Vedic Altar’. If you take the time to read this material, you cannot fail to realise that it must be taught to her students. Otherwise, what is the point? You have the opportunity now to turn things around – no, actually the responsibility. To many it is incomprehensible that the Mother’s genius is not being shown to the students of her own school. There is no justification for this situation at all. There are specific keys the Mother left to reveal who they were and their greatness – scientific, though of course a new science. But that is precisely what the Mother had foreseen. It is here, in our midst, something that makes other paths pale in comparison. And yet, none in her own Ashram are interested.

It is hard to believe that material such as the enclosed would not be of immense interest at least to young people, especially at her school. The old can be left to their memories; the youth deserve and demand more.

[Completed]

_____________

¹ The Last Barrier, Reshad Feild, Harper and Row, USA, 1976.

Updating the Vedic Altar –12

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
November 9, 2011

[Link to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI,
Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part IX, cont., Part X, Part XI, Epilogue]

‘But continuing to look they see a big splash and some sort of animal emerging from the water. The distance is too great to make out what form of creature he is, though they suspect it to be a crocodile. With a steady, persevering pace the animal moves closer, toward the very place where Val and Pom-pom stand, for he too is scaling the mountain but with a strength much greater than the children’s.
‘Before long he reaches them and they are faced with a very strange animal, a Goat with the tail of a Fish!’

The Magical Carousel, a zodiacal odyssey,
Chapter 10, PNB (1970)

‘Meru, Mandara and Kailasa are the first three names amongst the twenty types of temples described in the early texts…all three are the names of the Mountain, which is the axis of the world: that is Meru, the pole of the earth; Mandara as churning rod, planted on Vishnu, the tortoise during the Satya Yuga…and Kailasa, as seat of Siva in the Himalaya. In these names rises the temple, the image, the aim and destination of this world edifice.’

The Hindu Temple, Part V, page 161,
‘The Image of the Mountain and the Cavern’
Stella Kramrisch

‘In Vijayasena’s inscription at Deopara…the high temple of Pradyumnesvara is compared to the (central) Mountain on which rests the sun at midday, and this is the only Mountain worth mention among all mountains.’

Ibid, fn page 61

Capricorn is the Mountain is India. This new way aphorism fulfils the specifications of the sacred texts for temple building in a more tangible manner because what is conveyed in the physical structure is vitalised by the connection with the zodiac. On this ancient basis what the architectural and scriptural prescriptions contain can be made factual through Number and Calendar, provided the correct systems are used, unlike the Hindu calendar in India today. Capricorn is ever and always the key for India, its ruling sign. I have explained some of the new Vedi’s temporal applications in the earlier parts of this series; we must now include the final ingredient: India. How does the Mother’s chamber accommodate the subcontinent in her design in applicable, factual terms? If it is a hymn to Saturn and Saturn is India’s planetary ruler via Capricorn, then India must figure centrally – and indeed she does. She occupies pride of place.
Capricorn is the Mountain is India is the Globe is 70cm – so goes the complete equivalency, highlighting once again the Globe of the Core measuring 70cm, as specified by the Mother. The correspondence comes through the Capricorn hieroglyph laid across the landmass of Akhand Bharat with its longitude and latitude coordinates as shown in the diagram below; they measure exactly 30+40=70cm of the Globe.

Not only does Gnosis reveal the time factor of the appearance of the 9^th Avatar but also the place. The 10^th hieroglyph delineating the integral 30+40 of the subcontinent landmass shows us graphically where the passage from 9 to 10 must occur. This is an example of how integration takes place – hinging on the realisation of the 9 becoming 10. The 10^th sign is both time and place (space). It is the living abode of Mahakala, Mt Kailash descended on Earth as illustrated:

Further, if we lay the zodiac across the bands of longitude of 30 degrees each, the same as each sign, amazingly Capricorn begins at 60E, as indicated above. When the zodiac is laid across latitudes Capricorn also covers India (6N to 36N). (See The New Way, Vol. 2, Chapter 9 for details.) In both directions Capricorn ‘covers’ India, a further proof of the wisdom of the Ancients who could ‘see’ this rulership without the need of satellites.
To complete the understanding of Saturn’s role, we must return to the symbolism of the Mountain which I referred to in Part One. Prof Ramachandra Rao considers that the Gopuram of Hindu Temples was an evolution of the primitive funerary mound to the more sophisticated Mountain symbolism of the Gopuram. However, it is actually India’s zodiacal sign, Capricorn/Makar, ruled by Saturn, that has given rise to the Mountain/Gopuram because Capricorn is the sign of the Mountain, uttarayana, or the northernmost and highest point in the wheel, known as Cosmic Midday when the Sun casts no shadows, ‘…the (central) Mountain on which rests the sun at midday, and this is the only Mountain worth mention among all mountains’ (Pradyumnesvara temple inscription).
This knowledge was alive and well in the Puranic era; temples across India bear witness to this fact. They were repositories of the same secret knowledge of the Rig Veda. What can be known of India’s destiny ignoring these facts? If we refuse to see the consistent coherency of her destiny via the 10^th sign, Capricorn/Makar, how can she physically become the World Mountain, centre/soul of the Earth? But if the cosmic script itself forms the background of the geometry and later the architecture, the conclusion can only be that the Ancients had knowledge of Time and Cosmos which required the Geometry of Time to understand, through the initiation process of the Journey. That Geometry of Time also lies at the heart of the Mother’s vision and original plan.

In Part 11, the basis was laid for understanding not only the prevailing conditions in India but in the entire world. I would go a step further to state that as goes India so goes the rest.
We all realise that a very dramatic turning point has been reached on Earth. We witness those ‘crushing circumstances’ the Mother wrote of in 1972 (see Part 4, fn2) seeming to take place before our eyes. Some call them the effects of global warming; for others it is the greed of the ‘creamy layer’ of society across the world finally taking its toll. We see the near total collapse worldwide of economies and crises involving energy sources and supplies, all coupled with a paralysis in systems of governance everywhere. No one seems to have original ideas that can bring solutions to these multiple woes. To cap it all, our cherished Relativity Theory also stands on the edge of collapse.
It is clear that democracy is the best available system of governance, which seems to be imposing itself as indeed the will of the people. But once that will is expressed, by the ballot or as in an Arab Spring or through an Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement on the subcontinent, the task then falls to political leaders to implement that will – and once again ‘the centre cannot hold’ and things fall apart: every area of life today is clearly deadlocked, or else in a state of near collapse. And since we must agree with the belief that people get the leaders they deserve, it is evident that both people and leaders, as things now stand, have to exceed their limits and become something else. This ‘something else’ is the answer. If Humpty-Dumpty has a definitive fall now, he cannot be put together again to resemble what he formerly was. There has to be a new order.
India has the answer. This civilisation has preserved it for many thousands of years. But it is preserved like an Egyptian mummy: some are found handsomely decorated, their tombs filled with gold and unimaginable wealth; while others beneath the Pharaonic level are more modest. Whatever status they once held, in death they are the same: lifeless mummies serving only to call attention to a once-great civilisation, possessor of a knowledge now buried along with the last mummy.
In India there are no mummies, but when Sri Aurobindo wrote in the last century that ‘the soul of knowledge had fled from its coverings’ and only empty forms remain, is it not the same as Egypt? Indeed, the line of higher knowledge was the same for both; but India’s task has been decidedly more onerous because the Earth she presides over now stands on the brink of creation or destruction. And it is only the secret Knowledge that can save the world. We need to understand why, and in what way.

In the Rig Veda verses with which I began Part 11, we are shown the full extent of the problem, as well as where the solution lies. The Rishis intentionally recorded that the most dangerous stage of the Journey was in completing the 9 to reach the 10^th – the period of victory. In Puranic tradition the Goddess requires 9 (nights) to overcome the mighty Mahishasura. The 10^th is also the day of victory. And now we learn from the supramental Gnosis that evolution itself stands in the 9^th Manifestation. By the laws of equivalency, the monthly journey of the individual realiser is extended to the entire Earth. If that 9 to 10 was a critical point for the traveller on the Path, we understand that the entire world as a whole must make the crossing successfully in our very Aquarian Age. This entails or demands a process never before experienced on Earth: the harmonisation of Being and Becoming, of the One and the Many, of Unity and Multiplicity, of the Centre and the Periphery. The latter provides a clue to t,he answer we seek: the symbol of the Sun which Sri Aurobindo stated is the symbol of Supermind along with the Square. Indeed, in combination they form the Core of the Mother’s chamber for which reason she stated that it is ‘the symbol of the future realisation’. But it was not just a static diagram that would fit the description. Like the Rishi the Mother was specific: It is the play of the solar Ray on the Core which is the realisation the Earth calls for in her most intense moments of aspiration. That play becomes integrated when the vital breath is breathed into the Core and the static diagram comes to life and time moves to the fulfilment of the golden seed of Truth-Consciousness that lies at the heart of all things in this material creation of 9 – indeed, the number-power of the Vertical, of all that moves.
For the Rishi the 10^th stage was the solar world, Swar. The word is commonly translated as heaven; but today heaven means beyond time and space and certainly all that moves and is therefore perishable and impermanent. Whereas Swar is a dynamic reality. We know this because the noble Rishi has told us so. He never meant a victory beyond life through death and in a heaven removed from this Earth. He used an Earth measure itself – the months and the years – to reach the solar world. How is it then that heaven of all religions came to be a reward after death? Or else, how is it that all spiritual paths place their goal in a static realisation, a peace removed from all that moves? The Rishis were more than clear: Swar is of the Earth and not the Beyond. That is why the Rig Veda is so secret and unintelligible. Those who call themselves ‘Vedic’, even astrological pundits, are missing the forest for the trees.
The answer is found in the zodiac script when keys of the supramental Gnosis unlock those ‘doors’ of the months and years and we enter the chamber the Mother geometrised and Sri Aurobindo prophetically described in his epic poem Savitri, decades before her vision:

There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
And there the tables of the sacred Law,
There is the Book of Being’s index page,
The text and glossary of the Vedic truth
Are there; the rhythms and metres of the stars
Significant of the movements of our fate:
The symbol powers of number and of form,
And the secret code of the history of the world
And Nature’s correspondence with the soul
Are written in the mystic heart of life…

Book I, Canto 5
CE, p. 74

The Rishis left India millennia ago. Before leaving they set in writing the Rig Veda, possibly around 1500 BCE. Nationalists will howl nonetheless here is the rub: Indologists are correct when they date the Rig Veda at 1500 BCE, though the civilsiation orally bequeathed this treasure to the world millennia before it was penned. The world was changing and would demand their withdrawal, but they assured humanity the survival of their wisdom – the only place on Earth, it needs to be stated – once the secret of the text would be unravelled, the task of the 9^th Avatar and the new line of Rishis.
Contemporary Hindu astrology/astronomy registers the onset of the current Kaliyuga as 3102 BCE, specifically with the passing of Sri Krishna, the 8^th Avatar of Vishnu; at least in this it is more or less accurate. The Epics give us all the data to discover the Evolutionary Avatars’ cosmic credentials in the Map of 12 Manifestations. But if a dark age is said to have begun in the 8^th Manifestation, is it far-fetched to assume that whatever has taken shape in the spiritual domain from that time onward can be said to be un-Vedic, or at least a deviation from that original realisation of the Rishis? Indeed, this divergence has been recorded. The Puranas do make this clear especially regarding the role of Gautam the Buddha. Starting with his birth around 500 years before the current era, paths began to surface through a number of noble realisers of undisputed integrity and proficiency which were gradually carrying spirituality to express the same wave sweeping across the entire world during the Age of Pisces (234 BCE-1926 CE). Across the spectrum the static Beyond became the goal, similar to the orthodox religions of the same period. In view of this unmistakable cosmic wave, it is understandable that the secret of the Rig Veda would fall into oblivion: the realisation of those earlier times was quite different than what we know today as Indian Spirituality. The divide has become so pronounced that many even consider the Puranas to be lesser scriptures, certainly bearing no direct link to the realisations of the Rishis. Making his regard for the ancient text clear, and the failure of others to grasp its fullest meaning, in the beginning of the last century and at the height of the Aryan Invasion Theory and nature worship frenzy, Sri Aurobindo wrote,

'I believe the Vedas to hold a sense which neither mediaeval India nor modern Europe has grasped, but which was perfectly plain to the early Vedantic thinkers. Max Müller has understood one thing by the Vedic mantras, Sayana has understood another, Yaska had his own interpretations of their antique diction, but none of them understood what Yajñavalkya and Ajatashatrou [Rishis] understood.... It is because we do not understand the Vedas that three fourths of the Upanishads are a sealed book to us. Even of the little we think we can understand, much has been insecurely grasped and superficially comprehended....
Shankara left so much of his text unexplained or put it by as inferior truth for the ignorant, Vivekananda found himself compelled to admit his non-comprehension of the Vedantin's cosmological ideas and mention them doubtfully as curious speculations.... Only when we thoroughly know the great Vedic ideas in their totality shall we be able entirely to appreciate the profound harmonious and grandiose system of thought of our early forefathers.
Religious movements and revolutions have come and gone or left their mark but after all and through all the Veda remains to us our Rock of the Ages, our eternal foundation.... The Upanishads, mighty as they are, only aspire to bring out, arrange philosophically in the language of later thinking and crown with the supreme name of Brahman the eternal knowledge enshrined in the Vedas. Yet for some two thousand years at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas.’

Sri Aurobindo,
India’s Rebirth,
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press. P. 137-8

Those who do believe in a superior role for India on the world stage are limited in their understanding because they lack the means to acquire what may be called a transcendent view of the situation. By this I do not mean extra-cosmic or detached from the material concerns life on Earth imposes, but rather a more total overview in time and space. The Map of the 12 Manifestations gives us the opportunity to examine developments across the globe in a far more comprehensive manner. The ability to view the passage of the Ages in long spans of time, to which the western mind is not accustomed, was also derailed when un-Vedic systems displaced the wisdom of the Vedic Age. While continuing to view the evolution across vast cycles called Yugas, the clutter that began to accumulate around the pristine nucleus of wisdom, due to the intrusion of Science, gradually overpowered the sacred and the key to the Yugas was also submerged in non-essentials; and finally downright errors were made. The result is that while the Kaliyuga is a reality we cannot ignore, just what that is and its duration is not grasped within the context of the real evolutionary movement affecting the entire globe simultaneously.
In this light another problem surfaces which affects seekers on all sides of the material/ scientific spectrum. In the mind of the staunch nationalist India stands somehow excluded from the reality we see about us. The same occurs across the world, even when Spirituality is not a claim to fame as we find in India. We witness a severe polarisation setting in everywhere. It is always ‘we and them’, or ‘we against them’, or we hold the sole truth, others are in the falsehood. The situation need not be described further; sensitive analysts will agree that this polarisation syndrome plagues the world as never before.
The point to bear in mind is that all positions, all opposites are correct within the totality of conditions prevailing at any given moment from the position that those conditions are experienced. Truth, of any side of the spectrum – material or spiritual – is indeed relative. Relativism is the paradigm of our times: everything is true yet also false, depending on the position of the observer. Yet if truth is the deepest essence of our existence, as the sages affirm, we must be able to recognise the eternal within the temporal, and how they both evolve together.
The keys of knowledge I have provided in this series are the means to understand those ‘total conditions’ at any given time in history. A student of Aeon Centre of Cosmology, with a degree in physics, explained the position with regard to the possible collapse of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity: It was not an error and was useful and applicable within a certain parameter, as Newton’s had been earlier. But when parameters are forced to expand, then the former constants and assumptions break down and a new formula arises, he explained.
In other words, relativism works within a system that may be described as fragmentary. It cannot function within the parameters of a unified system; hence the Unified Theory of theoretical physics eludes scientists.
This is what is happening across the board, not only in theoretical physics and scientific technology but in all spheres, including the spiritual and religious which many believe stand beyond these material boundaries. And in this 9^th Manifestation ruled by the 9^th sign Sagittarius, the key lies precisely in a constant expansion of those parameters/boundaries. Being the sign of speed par excellence, this can safely be recognised as the signature of our times. We stand witness to the accelerated drive in progress to re-set our boundaries.
In the above light examples can be provided to prove that the hardened positions of certain theologians and historians bear witness to what afflicts the entire spectrum: static-itus. Interestingly, when analysed with the parameters evolution itself provides, as seen in the Map, these hardened positions that appear opposite and uncompromising are entirely true within the framework of Relativity. As an example, let us take Creationism that has become the centre of unending controversy in the USA.
Broadly, based on the Bible scholars and theologians of Creationism sustain that the world was created by God in 7 days around 4000 BCE. There was no evolution from ape to man, no gradual development: God created the world as we know it today. Followers of the religions that have evolved out of this Biblical paradigm – referred to as People of the Book – staunchly oppose evolution as one of the firm pillars of their respective creeds. On the other hand, scientists dismiss even a hint that such ideas can be taught in educational institutions and planted in young minds, in this day and age with so much data to prove the premise false. But is Science not suffering from a piece-meal vision like everything and everyone else? With the perception of the totality of conditions prevailing at any given time, these positions, which remain radically opposed to each other, are in fact true. But, one may ask, how can both be true while being so divergent, though proposing to explain the same thing? The religious theologian will argue the matter from his transcendent position; the scientist from the platform of materialism which, in extreme cases, even denies the existence of a Creator at all. Yet, I repeat, both are correct.
The problem lies in the theologian’s inability to understand the scriptures and evolution with an overview such as the Map of 12 provides. In so doing, we realise that the only sin is fragmentation which afflicts the entire spectrum of human existence. Because of this the deepest truths the Scriptures themselves hold are hidden from the faithful and scholars alike. Because of fragmentation a division has been created between the Old and New Testaments and therefore their integrated contents cannot be used to solve the conundrum this divisiveness has engendered. The conflict around Jerusalem is a case in point. It is deeply symbolic in more ways than one.
Through both Old and New Testaments there runs a single thread which we may indeed consider to have been set in motion around 4000 BCE. The truth these Scriptures reveal is not at all in conflict with the truth of the evolution of consciousness on the planet; rather, they themselves explain the position better than anything Science can offer. What began in 4000 BCE was simply the onset of a process that would cover the next 6000 years, during which time the two positions, scientific and religious would be stretched to their extremes. It has reached a peak in our very times.
The Bible describes the specific parameters of the Mental Creation; that is, Genesis itself explains the fragmentising processes of Mind, starting from a single unit and developing to aggregates, to a multiplicity that eventually loses connection with its origins (the Fall). This is the nature and the property of the Overmental Creation, out of which religions have emerged. It was not the beginning of the world. It was actually the beginning of the end of the old consciousness or the human condition as presented in the Old Testament, best understood as a species under the rule of Mind, in transition through Overmind on the road to Supermind. This mental preponderance in the human species has given birth to both positions as we know them today, so aptly described by the Mother of her experiences in April and May of 1962. To put it bluntly, science while condemning Creationism simply reveals its inability to understand what afflicts both science and spirituality simultaneously and how this condition has been accurately described in the sacred texts of the Middle East themselves, which, over the past 2000 years, have taken centrestage and moulded human consciousness across the globe. As the Mother explained, only a third way beyond both could solve the impasse created by these two extremes. What is that Third Way? The Mother promised that the formula would come and indeed it has. Its most valuable asset is the ability it grants to ‘put each thing in its place’.¹
In the Map the unwinding, shall we say, set in at the time the Kaliyuga began in the 8^th Manifestation of the Overmental Creation. Both developments, east and west, would have begun at the same time. But the Biblical paradigm finally set the standard for the world we live in today and which appears to be collapsing at an accelerated pace, because we have entered the next stage, the 9^th, or the Supramental Creation. The role of India on the world stage is to set the new paradigm.
In the last book of the New Testament the apotheosis of our times is prophesied in Revelation. It closes the arc which began with Genesis. The trajectory from Old to New indeed describes the passage from Mind to Supermind, by which ‘all things are made new’. This is the value and power of unity-based perception.
In the context of Creationism and Science, both, it needs to be emphasized, are intrinsic parts within that Whole described in the Rig Veda as ‘the one circle’, and they have both evolved to the positions they hold today across the same period of 6000 years, the time India was engulfed in her own Kaliyuga. Religions have obfuscated their real and valid contribution to the evolution of human consciousness by dogmatising a fragmented truth contained in their own Scriptures. This is clearly the divisive action of Mind as regent of the species in extremis. To escape this cage of Mind, parameters have to be reset now and man must exceed his inner and outer limitations. Science for its part is thrust before the same stone wall if the end of Relativity has indeed arrived. What, then, is to be the new constant faster than the speed of light? What will replace the compartmentalisation of Relativity to introduce a true Unity?
The Vishnu Line of 10 covers the entire time spectrum during which period the three principles involved in this evolutionary process have come into prominence. To facilitate this task Avatars have appeared during the 7^th Manifestation (Mental), the 8^th (Overmental), and the 9^th (Supramental). While preserving this knowledge for humanity, it has been useless as a tool to help Indians understand the unique destiny of their own civilisation, except to inspire ideas of grandeur such as to become another superpower – a model that itself is also in extremis. The mechanics of obfuscation have been the same in India as elsewhere, and over the same time period as the Bible establishes for the ‘beginning of the world’: both Puranas and Epics set the start of the Age of Darkness at the very time the Biblical theologians have established for the ‘beginning of the world’. The real issue is, what ‘world’.
The way out of the impasse, or this critical crossroad of destiny, is to put each thing in its place within the Whole. But to do so requires the ability to embrace both parts and whole in a simultaneous vision of Oneness.

[Link to Epilogue - Conclusion]

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¹ This interpretation of the Old and New Testaments has been fully treated in The New Way, Volume 3, Aeon Books, 2005).