Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
November 9, 2011
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
November 9, 2011
‘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 9th Avatar but also the place. The 10th 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 10th 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 10th 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 10th – the period of victory. In Puranic tradition the Goddess requires 9 (nights) to overcome the mighty Mahishasura. The 10th is also the day of victory. And now we learn from the supramental Gnosis that evolution itself stands in the 9th 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 10th 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:
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 9th Avatar but also the place. The 10th 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 10th 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 10th 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 10th – the period of victory. In Puranic tradition the Goddess requires 9 (nights) to overcome the mighty Mahishasura. The 10th is also the day of victory. And now we learn from the supramental Gnosis that evolution itself stands in the 9th 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 10th 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 9th 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 8th 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 8th 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,
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 9th Manifestation ruled by the 9th 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 8th 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 9th, 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 7th Manifestation (Mental), the 8th (Overmental), and the 9th (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.
Contemporary Hindu astrology/astronomy registers the onset of the current Kaliyuga as 3102 BCE, specifically with the passing of Sri Krishna, the 8th 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 8th 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....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.
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
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 9th Manifestation ruled by the 9th 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 8th 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 9th, 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 7th Manifestation (Mental), the 8th (Overmental), and the 9th (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).
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