Reflections on the Nature of the Real - 2

Growing Pains

Thea (PNB)

Aeon Centre of Cosmology

Tamil Nadu, South India

14.8.2014

The number of controversies flying across India in large part can be termed ‘growing pains’: the need to accommodate the diversity that is India with the obligation to unify this diversity, particularly with regard to the compulsions of a planetary society. Language is usually central to these controversies and English is a primary target. Of course it is a ‘fall out’ of the British Raj, but is it not a fact that English has displaced French as the international ‘link’ language? French dominated while monarchies ruled; it was then the language of aristocrats. English is dominant today at a time when the people’s voice is heard, on the international stage. This was facilitated by colonisation which affected the entire populace and not merely an elite. And is it not a fact that most if not all of the technological and scientific publications are written in English? To abolish English in such a scenario would be a case of cutting one’s nose to spite one’s face. In a country as diverse as India, where that diversity manifests primarily through languages, what will the ultimate solution be?
There is another way of looking at the issue: India is privileged to have been given a jump-start with English, a language that in the future would displace French in international relations. But that advantage Providence has bequeathed is being contested. The desire to eliminate and replace English with Hindi, for example, has been again fiercely opposed by the southern states in particular.
For decades since Independence and the removal of the Raj the nation has sought a replacement to counter the constant reminder of subjugation in the eyes of many. One has to question in the same manner why cricket, a pre-eminently Raj sport, has appropriated centre stage, not allowing other international sports to flourish. Yet, no one protests against the dominance of cricket to the detriment of all other sports, when at the Olympic Games every four years we are reminded of the imbalance. The Commonwealth Games have recently been concluded. India did well, unlike at the international venue not limited to former colonies. Does India require some more time to spread her wings and fly beyond such self-imposed boundaries? Cricket is cherished when it is a product par excellence of British rule, similar to English. What is the difference? To add weight to my argument, today it is played exclusively in once-colonised nations and has never been able to extend its influence beyond. No one complains, no one sees this as a sort of umbilical cord. On the other hand, the language inherited from colonial rule has allowed India to move into an international role that was not the result of British imperialism alone but is part of the workings of the Time-Spirit which has used this imperialism to globalise the world. French dominated while monarchies dominated the international stage; it was a symbol of the Old World, the language of the aristocrats. English is dominant today as the people’s voice becomes an international phenomenon through the wide-reaching democratic process.
Internally a solution has to be found to the language conundrum. But is Hindi the answer, being easily seen as an imposition of the North over the South? This too is a relic from colonial times: the well-known divide-and-rule strategy of imperial Britain successfully used the world’s most ancient Scripture to cement this north/south divide in the nation; along with the idea that the subcontinent was devoid of anything that could be considered an advanced civilisation. In other words, Bharat was a geographic void which therefore could be ‘filled’ by the strongest contender – i.e. the British. There was hardly any effective protest for over a century. Finally, in the early part of the last century, Sri Aurobindo voiced a protest and penned the unique The Secret of the Veda so that the hidden regions the Veda itself brings to our attention could be understood for what they are and not as most Indologists concluded. The Riks speak of the realms accessed only by the Immortal Ones, the ancients who had undertaken the same journey that is open to seekers on the subcontinent and throughout the world – no boundaries, no proprietorship, no monopoly because the ‘language’ employed is universal. It is not English or Sanskrit. It is the Cosmic Script, the same today as thousands of years ago. This is universalism, so well put in the Sanskrit vasudhaivam kutumbakam.
In the meantime we realise that the cosmic language is embedded in the human soul, but how many are in touch with that hidden dimension of consciousness? The British through English left their stamp on the world and successfully displaced French as international link language. The subcontinent is to leave the cosmic script as the new ‘link’ of a planetary society. However, this is not learned in universities anywhere on the globe.
Finally we have reached the core of the problem. Has India left evidence of this universalism which every true Indian intuitively knows lies at the root of nationhood? We feel proud of the unbroken link with the past, particularly demonstrated in the place the Rig and other Vedas hold in contemporary Hindu society. But we must also acknowledge that no one understands the language of the Veda. I do not refer to Sanskrit, please note; that is the external dress the Sanatana Dharma clothes herself in for this cosmic cycle of many thousands of years. It wore another dress during other turns of the cosmic wheel. What the Rig Veda holds as its most cherished rahasya is that abiding Truth that today may even use English to clothe itself and hide its everlasting beauty that is only unveiled to those highest of souls.
   
In the news today we learn of a comment made by a learned former Justice of the Supreme Court of India. He emphatically states that the national Epics are ‘fiction’ – his precise word as reported in the news. In several of my publications I have disclosed that the language of the Epics is cosmic entirely (see Kashmir and the Convergence of Time and Destiny and The Secrets of the Earth, Aeon Books), and certainly they can never be termed fiction as we understand the word today, except by those who have been so thoroughly influenced by the legacy of the Raj that the channel of the cosmic script has become even more heavily covered over by a rationalism that denies what India holds most sacred: the Soul.
I have demonstrated that the tale the Epics tell is simply the ‘history’ as recorded in the cosmos and can be deciphered today as in the distant past and well into the future. The only prerequisite is to acknowledge its existence and to open oneself to the true history wise men and women of the subcontinent have known from time immemorial. This is what India is unveiling today.
Humility is also a prerequisite. Those in positions of authority must cultivate this quality above all others. Sobriety is another – the clarity of vision to distinguish what is temporal, though of value in its own day, and what is the eternally abiding Truth. Does it really matter who first made the discovery of certain mathematical and geometric formulas, when sight of that Eternal Truth has been lost, when the Epics can be cavalierly labelled fictitious, though they are factually the repositories of that Truth? Pride in one’s past achievements is certainly important and must be accurately conveyed to students, but within the context of India’s everlasting heritage.
A new cosmology is the need of the hour. The philosopher Ervin Laszlo has echoed this need in his book, The Creative Cosmos, a Unified Science of Matter, Life and Mind. He writes

The next paradigm shift will be by nature transdisciplinary – it will be a cosmological revolution in the classical sense in which cosmology has always been the science of the whole of reality (kosmos, after all means ‘ordered whole’ in classical Greek). (Floris Books, 1993.)

It is this ‘language’ that the true emanation of Vishnu brings to the Earth yuge-yuge, re-clothed as each new age requires, but ever voicing that abiding, underlying Truth. Or, as Laszlo describes, the aim of his study is

To shed light on the dynamics by which universal fields interactively create the evolving cosmos, producing the diverse yet consistent orders that meet our eye… (Ibid, p.27)

Certainly the cosmology of the New Way fulfils Ervin Laszlo’s aspirations, but one has to question whether or not he can set aside his academic conditioning and recognise its newness; precisely for this fact it has no parallel and must be evaluated on its own terms, based only on the material presented before the enquirer in the numerous publications of Aeon Centre of Cosmology/Aeon Books. This will come to pass, today, tomorrow – or perhaps this is immaterial; because we do note that since the beginning of this year in particular, there is an acceleration in evidence of the evolution of consciousness across the globe. This is particularly evident in the youth, abroad and in India. To be noted in this regard is the thoughtful article of Tufail Ahmed, entitled Herald of a New India, which appeared in The New Indian Express, 13.8.2014. It is available online as well. The author stresses the fact that India is expressing a timeless tradition now clothed in the new scripture which is her Constitution – as is certainly a befitting adornment in this Aquarian Age.
And this brings me to a controversy created by another sitting Justice. He declared that the Bhagavad Gita should be taught in schools from the first grade itself.
Howling and gnashing of teeth across the land!
All the other holy books would have to be taught, the demand was.
But surely it is a self-evident truth that the Gita speaks to us of things Indian, that bear a relation to India today as in the past, that is native to this sacred land, as sacred as is the Ganga because both are born in the subcontinent and bear a relevance that no other holy book can equal. If Indonesia does not have a problem with the Ramayana as national epic, though the country is predominantly Islamic, one has to ask what bedevils India that she feels obliged to diminish her millennia-old culture born of this sacred bhoomi, just to prove her secular credentials.
Finally, not only is a new cosmology needed, it is a cosmology that is Indo-Centric.