The Supramental Manifestation - Breaking Down the Old Ways

[The following transcript of a 1986 discussion with Thea, was originally published in The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 1, Number 4, August 1986. Link to Part One]

Discussions with Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet 

15 June 1986, Stone Ridge, New York

Part Two

    What is your view of Kundalini? What I have been taught is that the whole process of Kundalini, is that it rose from the lower chakra and came up to the top of the head. And then...we were in another state of consciousness; and the lower sexual energies ― whatever ― were transcended. Hasn't that always been a traditional part of yoga?

    Well this I find a very interesting question because, you see, you're getting into...they call it Kundalini Yoga, but really the basis of this is the Tantra. Tantric Yoga, a very old path, an interesting path. Dealing with the Shakti, the Divine Mother. Very interesting this, because apparently this is a path that accepts the Mother, that accepts Matter. It deals with that. But yet, you understand that the whole process is to come up and out. So, basically it's using this energy to project oneself again out. Because your body then becomes the image of the cosmos. It becomes that thing. And you are doing the same thing. You are projecting yourself out. And you do attain this higher consciousness, this Brahman Consciousness. Surely.
    This is a part of Sri Aurobindo's work — precisely this Ascent and Descent. And this is the important key because then it is contained in the body. Now, the discoveries that I have made are certain key points where these two things join, and what happens when they join. So, in this work, for example, you don't experience the rise of the Kundalini as such, which you may experience in other paths, when really you can feel it. In this, you may and you may not. But you do experience the centres. At certain points they become active. And the difference is because at the same time, simultaneously you are experiencing the Descent. And the Descent is your protection really. The Descent is what keeps you in the body.

    The descent of ‘What’?

    That's a good question too, because you see you experience it as a descent of the light, as a descent of the force, the peace, whatever. The only difference is that when it is combined with this other movement, it is always dynamic. This is the point. So, it is contained in the body, and this makes it a dynamic aspect of the Divine Consciousness. You feel it as a Grace, you feel it in many ways. Usually people who are doing this Yoga physically feel a force, coming in and descending. Of course there are different degrees. We can go on saying, well the Supramental Descent, YES, but wait. Because that requires an integral process also. So, there are different degrees of this descent of energy, force, Divine Consciousness...whatever you want to call it. Depending on what you are able to receive, and also depending on the total conditions that allow for this. So, it's a force. Call it Consciousness, that takes forms according to your particular needs, your particular stage of evolution. You may call it the Divine Grace. I mean, the Dove coming down...that photo of Agni-in-the-Core in The New Way. The impression is that. But of course there you have geometrically this combination, that you do not have anywhere else.

    We were talking about the spiritual ‘supermarket’ that exists in the United States. There is so much. Could you say a word; How does one find the right path? How is one directed to find the right path for himself?

    Well, you know, that is why in India they consider that in a lifetime when you find your real guru, that is the most blessed lifetime; and that is why they revere the Guru — because of this. Because it is not easy. And you may pass many lifetimes and you don't come upon it. It is really a supreme grace when you come to the point that you have met your master you see? And what can I say? It is not something that anybody can impose. The only thing that you can do is to put yourself inwardly in the condition to receive. And it will definitely come. Now, a way that you can go about this is this opening to the Divine, and this conscious call, this conscious offering of yourself for this purpose: that you be given this grace. There is really nothing else that you can do, to leave yourself inwardly prepared. That doesn't mean to become stupid and accept anything, because one of the sayings of Sri Aurobindo is that people came to the Ashram for his work, they came to lose the ego but the first thing they lost was their common sense!

                    (Laughter)

    This is certainly what happens in America! Not only America. All over! You know, when people start justifying things. There's a breakdown of a certain ashram, and then you hear all of these justifications: Well, the Guru really meant this and he…What? He meant what he meant! Unless you really have a perception to see that this is a certain strategy.... But mostly in these movements things are very clear. You have to be very careful and be discriminating.

    And also it seems, at least in this country, many movements start out quite pure, and then these energies come into them....

    In our latest newsletter, the Vishaal [1/2, June, 1986] I discuss this situation, especially in terms of eastern teachings that have come here. I was talking about movements coming from the East and getting swallowed up...

    And good teachers becoming really corrupted.

    It is remarkable, what goes on. Because they are coming here and they are confronting a power that is the contribution of the United States to this world process. And they are confronting it here, really the heart of materialism. I mean in its purest sense. As a solution. As a poise. As opposed to Spirit. Solution, on the material plane. This emphasis, this focus on that. And they come here, and they tell you — all of them — (again we come right back to the same problem) they tell you: It's an illusion.
    Buddhism is very strong in this country, and though the Buddha didn't preach that, this was the general outcome of his teachings. That it is an illusion and you must accept it as that, and be done with it as soon as possible. So, they come here and they think that they are going to save everyone. What are they basically preaching? Again it is some otherworldly reward, or state.... And again, because they are not...it is an escape process and they are not poising themselves properly to deal with this phenomenon that is the United States, they are undermined in this. And they succumb to this. They must. Again, it is almost mathematical. They have to succumb to that. They think they are going to bring eastern spirituality here, and what happens is they don't have the power, they don't have the poise to withstand this impact. And these collapses come; they are overtaken. Because they are denying the truth in this. Constantly. So that denial leaves them vulnerable. And the process goes on.
    This is why the solution has to be this real integration of what the East represents and what the West represents; and that is then something higher. It is not taking this and taking that and putting them together. It's this higher thing that integrates those two. And that is what we are in the process of bringing down, and discovering: this higher poise that brings about integration. If you ignore that, if you ignore that there is such a possibility of doing such a thing, you get lost over here, you get lost over there. It is inevitable. And money! That's the key to it.

    That doesn't make the philosophies bad, it's just somehow they don't travel very well. I wonder how effective the eastern philosophy is in the West, at all.

    They're ineffective. Certainly they are not the solution. I don't mean to sound intolerant, but I am just telling you the fact which I think you can see for yourselves: that we haven't found a solution. Of course people are very disturbed because then they say, ‘Well, the problem is that we must find a western solution.’

    Yoga for the West.

    Yes, you know, it goes on and on like this. But it's all the same thing. There is a universal work, there is something that goes beyond this kind of division. And this is what is being born today. This is mainly the reason for this interchange: so that everybody is ready for it.

    A lot of people have had very significant and powerful experiences, no matter how impure the teaching was by the time they got it. It has helped them on. I have had experiences that have helped me on my path, to get to a point where I am receptive to other things.

    Yes, this is it. And exposed you to things. Thirty years ago young people did not even know the word yoga existed. They didn't know what it was. The terminology. If you are interested in astrology: look how many people can now appreciate better the Gnostic Circle because they know that something like the 12 zodiacal signs exist. They know the symbols. Before this wasn't possible.

    Another thing we were discussing was our relationship to the religion we were brought up in. And all three of us said we were no longer very interested in Judaism. And yet, what was the significance of having incarnated in Jewish bodies? Do we have to come to terms with that in a certain way, or are we free to become yogis or whatever we wish? Do you see a conflict there?

    There's the same conflict that anybody would have who was born...I mean, I was born into a Catholic family and, well, I don't find any traces of that at all. However, culturally of course there are, and we carry that along.

    Spiritually, do we have to come to terms with this spiritually in any given incarnation?

    No, I really don't think so in terms of spirituality; but, you know, when you do find your way, there is that immediate recognition. As happened to me, for example. The language was the one. You understood it right away, you vibrated to it. And this had nothing to do with what a Catholic...but it wasn't Hindu also. It was Sri Aurobindo's language which was also new. This work is as revolutionary in India as it may be anywhere else. In India the only difference is that they'll all sit and say, Yes, Yes...because the Hindus accept absolutely anything! Everybody says yes-yes-yes, but nobody does anything! So they all agree, and you don't get any flak. It's all wonderful, and the Divine is wonderful, and everybody is so full of bhakti. That's it. And they mean it sincerely. It is not a pose; in every fibre of their beings, they are the most tolerant people in the world.
    But you see, in India too they have moved away from this, and they have not accepted this solution here. They have finally come to that grand proclamation that material creation is an illusion. That was the height of what they reached, until Sri Aurobindo came along. It was in the Middle Ages that they reached that; and believe me, it is such a strong imprint that it seems almost impossible to get over it.

    You're talking about the Lila?

    Yes, it is supposed to be an ‘illusion’.

    So, the problems for everybody in this respect are the same. The Jewish problem is very interesting because of the condition of western society — Jewish and Christian at the same time. Again you have to look at these things: What are these religions, what are these peoples? I have written many chapters on this in the third volume of The New Way, on the Jews and the Arabs and this development of the mental and the vital. Each one representing that. Now, it seems crazy: How can a people represent this? Well, you take the Arabs, — just to give you a little detail of the Arabs representing the vital being in the world sense. And isn't it clear: ENERGY. Look at what they did to the world in 1973. That turned everything upside-down. They had this ‘black gold’, and everything was in reaction to that. And you take it just in terms of animal symbols too, because you have the Horse that represents that vital energy from very ancient times. And you have the most magnificent horse that came out of the Arab world: the Arabian, and the Thoroughbred.
    Little things like that will give — apart from the characteristics of the race, of the religion that formed out of it — the nature of the race. And then you have the Jewish, of course, that represents the mental. Very clear. You see?

    So right now they are at each other's throats, and rather than be integrated...

    There is no solution.

    There can't be a solution.

    On that level there is no solution. Only when the higher ‘thing’ manifests.

    But wouldn't you have thought it would have happened earlier when there was the transition from the vital to the mental, rather than at this point, when we are in the transition from the mental to the spiritual?

    No, because now we are going into these higher levels where this is possible. Before it wasn't at all. You have to complete these circles before you get to the point where you can...

    But it is more possible?

    Well if it is not possible now it is not going to be possible at any other time! Because it is one way or the other now. Remember, it is the 9th Manifestation. That's the key. It is the 9th Manifestation. From the 9th you extend your boundaries. And that is exactly what is happening now. Then you go to the point of integration and unity, — the 10th, 11th, and 12th.

    I have another question which is, how, if at all, does this teaching deal with the concept that there are souls that incarnate on other galaxies,  and then come to Earth; either as rescue souls, or whatever, at certain points in evolution here.

    Oh gosh, I have had to deal with this problem....

                    (Laughter)

    I can see it's not one of your favourite subjects!

                    (Laughter)

    No, I...again, it's slightly irrelevant, in a sense. You know, anything is possible. Well, I certainly believe that we are seeing something from outer space; that the people that are seeing these, are seeing. But the question is, What are we seeing? Where is it coming from? Is it coming really from another galaxy? Or is it from another dimension that now has taken this form, because we are in this Age. There are so many descriptions of things in the Bible; of visions that people have, or angels. Well, now people see a man from Mars, or something else, from Sirius, or some other galaxy. Much of this is conditioned. So, there is something behind it all, you see. But people have to realise that the form that it takes is very largely conditioned by our stage of evolution. We are in the space age; so obviously we like those kind of solutions. That's one aspect.
    The other aspect is; what has that got to do with the Earth, really? I think that again this is a solution from outside. This is saying, ‘well we are going to be saved by something from outside.’ I know that that is not so.

    When I ask I'm not coming from that point. I almost didn't ask, because I felt, it really is not relevant. There still is the work that needs to be done here. But I do think it's relevant, on the other hand, because while you were talking...you know when it came into my head actually? It was when you were talking about the human being evolving and at certain points in the life if the right choice is not made, then these crusts will develop. It occurred to me that perhaps a soul...I've been told that I am a soul that came to this Earth during the Atlantean era and that I was from a place called ‘Arcturus’.

    You too!

                    (Laughter)

     Great!... I'm not ridiculing this, I just find it interesting.

    It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything to me. It's not useful for me to know that. But it still is perplexing because it makes me want to know, do souls incarnate on Earth and take part in the cycle and then just go off somewhere else?

    Well, they may. But honestly I've dealt with this VERY DEEPLY lately. I can't tell you how deeply I've dealt with this very galaxy!

                    (Laughter)

    And I have great respect for certain people...prominent ones from that galaxy! But the point is that...they don't have the answers. And why? Because they really are closed in that perception that they have come and that they are bringing something, and they have a special mission to help. They are involved in this whole lifting off the planet when the axis.... Well, now what happens here again is that they have not understood what the nature of the work is, what the Earth as a planet signifies, and what its purpose is in the solar system. And that's all I'm concerned with.
    If you're coming from Arcturus and you're going to help, that's well and good; but you've got to do this. Whatever you bring from Arcturus is not going to be any solution here at all, because, you see, it is the total conditions at each moment; and you cannot reproduce those any place else. Or else you don't come into this body. Then you really come in a space suit, or whatever, with all your gear and you go back again. But you cannot reproduce this. The work must be done in the body, and rooted here and with all the solutions that all the totality of these conditions can provide. And they cannot come from outside.
    They may be souls that are evolved, in a certain sense they have experienced different things, and have a certain maturity and wisdom; but those people are still infants when they come into this. Because the conditions are different. And require different solutions.
    Again, I find this another escape. It is fascinating because it's a wave going through the United States. You get these communications, from automatic writing, or whatever, and people believe absolutely anything that comes through. And it's all very flattering...probably they even told you that you have a mission, you're going to do this, that and the other. That is usually the way it goes on. It was obviously an ‘evolved’ soul that has come back. Nobody was just a little sweeper, a garbage collector, or something like that. It's something very grand sounding. And as you said very rightfully, So what?
    There you are, stuck in that body, with all your complexes or your whatever...and you've got to deal with that, and how are you going to deal with it? It doesn't help you in the least to know these things. Even if it were true. And most people that really are that, don't bother with it. In fact, they don't even know. And it never comes to them. It may very well be, but it's just that somehow these things then take possession of people and they deviate from the...

    That's right. This came through a psychic and I had put off going to a psychic for a very long time because I saw a lot of people using information that came from psychics as a way of avoiding responsibility for their own lives and dealing with external solutions.

    How did she get this, by automatic writing?

    She has a source. It comes through a source, and she is a channel.

    Well, it's the same thing.

    Right. But I had the same response which was, on one level, this was very interesting, but it doesn't really change what...you know, it doesn't change...

    And the point is that it may not be true, and then you are carried.... Usually it is not true. Usually it's imaginative, and there are beings that are playing a lot of games in other dimensions. You know, they are communicating a lot of things to create a very big confusion.
    And why? Why is this taking place? Because really, now comes the crunch! Everybody wants to stamp their own image on what is taking place here. It is not even wicked, as such. It's just that there are forces, as there are forces that work for the destiny of the Earth itself, in attunement with the Earth's soul, there are forces that have a completely different purpose; and would like to see their solutions, or their image stamped upon this, in total ignorance.
    You know, what I find very interesting is that some of these psychics, for example, are contacting people who lived here and have died, right? They have their sources and they contact those people, and they have their ‘friends’ on the other side, or whatever. And somehow, just the fact that it's a disembodied entity, makes everything true! If they had a limited consciousness here, they've got the same limited consciousness on the other side. They may know a few other things, they may be able to predict, on a very limited scale, happenings; because they can manipulate certain forces and allow for things to happen. But this is all on a very, very limited level. And this is the danger, because if you know this, and if you deal with this consciously, it can be very interesting. If you don't, it can be extremely dangerous. Really dangerous. Or else just distracting.

    Can all the comments that you've just made be applied to Ramtha?

    I've heard that name, among all the...on the West coast, isn't it? I've heard through another person, who has a different ‘source’ (!) I haven't read the writings of this Ramtha, so I can't comment directly; I would have to see them. Somebody said it was awful, and this, that and the other. There were things apparently that were positively awful! I'd have to see it myself. But, I can say that usually the level of these things is very old — old consciousness. This is what I have felt of any of those communications that I have picked up. It is an old, old consciousness. And it really has nothing to do with the real work.
    So it's a problem, because some people are greatly uplifted by these things. For some people it is their only contact with something out of the material, something which they can term ‘spiritual’. And they don't see the limitation. In India people understand this in very great depth: the occult planes; how these forces work. Tantra deals with that.
    So in India they make a clear distinction between occult practices and spiritual practices, while in America they don't understand this at all. And therefore they just push it [the distinction] aside.
    Now in this Yoga you don't. You cannot say, I want only the spiritual and not the occult, because the occult practices are dealing with that Cosmic Body of the Mother. That is where all of that is going on; and that's a very important part. But you see, it can be that ‘maya’, that temptress, that illusion; in terms of the Rig Veda, she is called ‘Diti’. Or it can be Aditi, the Mother of Light, the Mother of Unity, the Mother of Bliss. So, you have these two things, and it is a very fine line. One of the most difficult experiences is when you see these two sides of the thing, — the dark and light of the same Mother, and you don't know what the ultimate solution is.
    So, it is not possible to say: Just leave it all aside. I think what really one has to say is, ‘Be very careful and find a guide who you can trust in these matters, if you really feel...’ If it is not your destiny to go along that way and you really want a spiritual level, it's best then just to leave it alone because it can lead you astray. And if it is your destiny that you work on a more integral thing, then it's good to have somebody who knows about these things, as a guide. And usually the people who are serving as mediums are not very evolved in that way. They are usually just channels through whom this is coming. So, between you and that disembodied entity, whoever, you have got to rely on your own discrimination. And most of us simply do not have the knowledge.

    I saw part of the ‘Ramtha Tapes’, which are being circulated in this country. It was very interesting to watch just what happened to the woman when she became that, and the way she spoke. A lot of what was said was said in humour, almost in a flippant way. There was a great deal of flippancy. But, oddly enough, some of Sri Aurobindo's teachings were presented.

    They do. They do.

    It's not the old teaching. There are new teachings coming through, about the evolution of the new body. It got so silly...a really mixed bag.

    That is the whole problem. These entities do have access to certain information. Everybody is now onto the thing about the new body. It's clear that something has happened, cosmically, let's say, to allow these things. But it is what you said: a mixed bag. That's the problem. That's the most serious problem, it is that [is how?] how are you going to distinguish? And one thing is a contact like that. Another thing is really getting involved. Now I know this because I have dealt with this thoroughly. I've done this myself, and I know it thoroughly, how it works. And I know the point at which you have to be very careful, because, yes, so many things come through that are simply astounding. But it's a mixture. In the experiences that I had it wasn't so much the mixture; that wasn't the problem. But I could see.... I received years ago volumes of things, that today people are publishing. Well, I destroyed them all because I said, what's the point, what am I going to do with this. It was like a weight. So one day — I was in India — I just made a bonfire of the whole thing! It wouldn't have occurred to me, ever, to publish these things. Yet these people go on doing it. Well, it can be very important for your own personal development. I had a particular contact, and of course it identified itself as the Divine Mother...well, but I had to test it constantly, and really put itself and myself through very difficult situations, in order to be able to come to the truth of what was behind it, how it functions. For your own personal development, if you have a contact like that, sometimes it can of course be very important. But the way it is being used today is simply another ego manifestation. Usually the solutions are old, as I say. They may say some things...and they usually say what you want to hear. I mean, it is very clever manipulation that is very difficult for people to deal with. We don't know how. We don't have that knowledge.
    Tantric yogis, for example, can deal with those things, but they go through very long and severe initiations, a whole process that allows them to do this. And still there is always a danger, still. But because they do worship the Mother, the Shakti, they have to deal with that. They cannot...because, as I say, all of this is taking place within the cosmic body: the Mother, within that Cosmic Body. And if you are following a path like that, you invariably come to this point, when you have to discriminate. But you make a discrimination. And you know what is coming from an even higher source.
    So, that's all I have to say. Each case is very individual in this. You have to go into it, you have to see what it means for that person. What I always say is, ‘All right then, MOVE ON.’ That was interesting, it mentioned Sri Aurobindo, it might have reminded you, might have been a source to remind you of something. But you move on to more solid work. But I find a lot of these people don't because they are flattered and they create then a whole cult around this. This is happening in America.

    Including a lot of money.

    It's phenomenal the money that people pour out because of these kind of...

    The spiritual teachings I received from Indian teachers always said that you can't take money for teaching about God. You know, that knowledge has to be given free. Or if there is some, it is minimal, just so that the teacher can continue to function. But I always feel that when people come to teach about God and they say the seminar about God is $400.... There is something not quite right about that!

    There was one who had a happy balance in all this, to whom I was rather close at one time. I may disagree with some points, but in this.... That was Krishnamurti. I think he handled that beautifully. You know, he was involved with a lot of money always because the people he was with had money. And he lived the best...I mean, his attire, everything. It was always the best. Yet, at least all the times I saw him, in Rome and Gstaad, of course we didn't have to pay to go. He had money, because he started schools, so he needed it for that. But he kept a happy balance in this; he dealt with it in the right way.
    You need money. You have to have it, to publish books, to do this, that. I had a terrible conflict in the beginning, where I thought, Well, money, that's out, that's really awful. And of course I had a shock to see the Mother dealing with money. I thought, at that time, that it should have been like Ramakrishna...who couldn't even touch a coin, because if he touched it his fingers BURNED! It was awful.
    Well, that was totally stupid, also. It was obviously something unresolved in me at that time, that couldn't deal with this problem. So, there has to be a balance. Sure. Money represents something. We can't deny it; and we have to deal with it, I won't say spiritually, but we have to understand what the force is and why these movements get so much. How is it that they can draw in millions, they become multi-million dollar organisations. And at that point the whole thing is lost.
    But I think in a case like Krishnamurti's, for example, whatever he started out with he did not lose. Whether one agrees with what he says or not, is a different thing. But that never contaminated it, this contact with money never did. And he had very rational, very sane dealings with people that followed him. There was never a difficulty, never the scandals that come out.... First class, you know.
    That was Krishnamurti's destiny. It was that from the beginning; in fact, that was why he was able to handle it so well.

    It's gotten out of hand in this country.

    Of course. But everything in that sense has gotten out of hand.

    I think part of the reason is that people are so desperate for an answer, they're willing to pay and they think...

    ...the more they pay, the more true the answer will be.

    It follows from that that we are imbalanced, that we work from the left hemisphere of the brain, altogether, in this country?

    Well, I really can't go into that deeply. I think that there is a certain amount of truth in that, but I would say that we are functioning from half levels of both. You know what I mean? This is more the answer, that there is a distortion on both. Because if you really go into it, in the areas that each hemisphere governs you find the same kind of distortion. So, I would say that we tend to think of it now in terms of the left being prominent. But, only apparently, really; only on the surface is that true. I think that the problems we face as a society are projections from both sides that are simply not integrated and in harmony, because, again, something else....
    This is where Sri Aurobindo's teachings come in, very strongly. This whole matter of a manifestation of what he calls the Supermind, which is something beyond all of this; that is, that would be the governing principle of a new race. And that is why all of this is breaking down now, you see, because this higher principle must come in and establish itself. And then put into right perspective everything. Every part of the being, governed by both — the more emotive and the more intellectual — what we call the mental and the vital.

    There is a lot of confusion in this area. For instance in India they talk of the mind; but what I think they're referring to is a mixture of the emotions and the intellect...

    I think there is a confusion. I agree with you...they often refer to mind also as the spirit. Like the hymns that Vivekananda, that Ramakrishna used to chant, you often find them translated as, ‘O Mind, soar above’ and so on. And there it clearly gives the impression of the spirit. This is what they mean. These are the technicalities that at some point become important to clarify. In the beginning it is just semantics; it is unimportant. But when you get into the Yoga very seriously, at some point you really have to start defining. You want to know what you are dealing with, what Mind is, what Consciousness is, what the Soul is. Make distinctions between these things. Right now it is very interesting the work they are doing on the brain. I think it is extremely interesting, but I think that, again, it's like everything else: it's just the beginning. There are very big possibilities of discovery, as yet not really fully understanding...

***

[Link to Part III]

The Dilemma of Language

In this new series, Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet explores the new foundation of Knowledge established by the Supramental Manifestation and the 'imperative necessity to evolve a new language in order to distinguish it from traditional yogas and spiritual paths, a language that describes more faithfully the new experiences of the reality of our material world and the true foundations of this new consciousness that is being established on Earth, in and of time.' Readers are invited to consider how our modern society and its language is based on a deeply ingrained schism between matter and spirit which promotes the tendency towards escapism and severely limits our ability to recognize the true nature and structure of our reality and our evolutionary unfolding. Questions from readers are welcome.

 Question & Answer 1:

‘Finally, with that I could not resist and a couple of letters have gone ‘to the Editor’, but I doubt they will get printed. They are, as usual, too long. But what to do? I am constantly faced with an ‘educational programme’ without which I cannot transmit anything. Actually, it is a process of REORIENTATION, or rather of turning the whole thinking process inside-out. I realise that there is this contamination in the thought process, and unless that is cleansed no sense can be made out of anything true and real. One has to establish that basis first, then proceed. But for this reason it all becomes so long and drawn out. Yet, I know of no other way. What I foresee happening is that on the basis of this labour in future people like yourself will be able to BUILD on that renewed foundation, and then the discussion is shorter and more to the point because there is this accepted foundation. For now we have to battle against the falsehood of the ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ iron stronghold. Truly this has infiltrated everything and coloured everyone’s thinking. Wherever one turns it is there. I am trying to establish another basis for the discussion without which nothing of the new can take root. In the process we have to reverse things, thinking, bring matters to the point where this new way is accepted as a right foundation, equal in every way and better than the old seeing.’

From a letter to Girilal Jain
30 December 1991

Skambha, 8.4.2013

Q: Why haven’t Scientists studied Time like they have studied Matter? Clearly, from civilizations such as the Vedic and the Mayan, we see that the sages, upon whose wisdom the civilizations were built up, were well versed in the knowledge of micro and macro cycles of time. They understood that the evolution or development of consciousness on Earth played out in terms of vast ages which were ‘months’ of the Great Year (i.e. the Precession of the Equinoxes). Underlying this understanding of Time was the knowledge of the inseparable connection between Spirit and Matter. Our civilization seems to be built on both a rejection of Time gnosis and an acceptance of a split between Spirit and Matter. You have begun the process of restoring Time gnosis and studying it with the goal of fully realizing the unity of Matter and Spirit – realizing unity consciousness. This seems to be a task of great importance when it comes to World and Self-Knowledge, yet the vast majority of people, whether on the Spiritual or Scientific (Materialistic) side of the split, are content to ignore or negate Time altogether. What do you think it will take for people to become interested in fully integrating Time into their scientific or spiritual pursuits? What might crack this seemingly impenetrable wall of resistance that has built up over several millennium?

A simple answer to your question would be ‘the time was not ripe’ for a penetration into Time’s mysteries. I have pointed out in several of my more recent publications, as well as in the series The New Way, that this is India’s task, even as Egypt’s was the Space factor. But of course in the case of the latter, their approach was entirely different than what we would consider today to be a ‘conquest of space’. It has nothing to do with space travel, or even a speed barrier which would incorporate the latest findings regarding space at some level. The enormous difference is this question I keep returning to: the DIRECTION OF THE QUEST. For science today the direction is entirely different: it seeks for answers externally, so to speak. It is always looking into the past, never the present where the answers are to be found. In ancient times it was always an Earth-oriented quest.

We have lost the direction today. This loss lies at the root of most of our problems. I believe it arose with the idea that we must subdue the Earth/Nature. That has been the attitude for centuries – it seems to have been given religious sanction.

Returning to your question, to truly understand the role of Time the only way is through the ‘porthole/wormhole’ (!) of the present. Coupled with that is an understanding of Gravity. Having said that, we come to the core issue: The real mystery is and will remain gravity until Time is dealt with appropriately. Gravity holds the key to the Time factor. Science is unable to do that because of the obstacle its ‘tools’ present – namely its mathematics. Entry into that domain requires that the individual realiser undergo extreme compression (of consciousness), contraction almost to obliteration. Is there a scientist today who can do that?

In this 9^th Manifestation the task before us is ‘the conquest of Time’ – and it is in India that the path is being opened. You have rightly commented that in ancient times sages accepted Time’s important role; they mapped out its large cycles and were quite comfortable with the measure of aeons – in fact more comfortable than with the smaller details. This time we have to deal with the time factor as it unfolds before us. We deal with the larger cycles, but not disconnected from the day-to-day unfolding. This is because the consciousness of unity you mention comes about when the two axes (time and space) are harmonised. In philosophical/yogic parlance, it would be the integration of Being and Becoming.

India is the only country today that maintains a thread with that ancient ability to consider/ map out the passage of Time in large cycles. But India has also lost the key to the here-and-now. In so doing, it is also out of synchronisation with the larger because you cannot have one without the other. But at least it is a discourse familiar to the population. That is a good beginning. That ‘thread’ with the ancient way has been preserved here precisely for this present task.

The following article which was first published in The Vishaal Newsletter (1985) concisely explains the situation:

THE SPIRITUAL AND SCIENTIFIC CONUNDRUM

‘We believe that we are heading toward a new synthesis. Our role is not to lament the past. It is to try to discover in the midst of the extraordinary diversity of the sciences some unifying thread. Each great period of science has led to some model of nature. For classical science it was the clock; for nineteenth-century science, the period of the Industrial Revolution, it was an engine running down. What will be the symbol for us? What we have in mind may perhaps be expressed best by reference to sculpture, from Indian or pre-Colombian art to our time. In some of the most beautiful manifestations of sculpture, be it in the dancing Shiva or in the miniature temples of Guerrero, there appears very clearly the search for a junction between stillness and motion, time arrested and time passing. We believe that this confrontation will give our period its uniqueness.’  

Prigogine & Stengers,

Order Out of Chaos

It had always seemed to me that science, unlike spirituality, accepts the validity and relevance of certain cosmic properties such as time and space, which constitute our experience of material creation – indeed, which are fundamental to the emergence of a creation in matter. Spirituality, I had come to discover early on, denied any valid purpose and place to these aspects of creation. In fact, almost all spiritual paths can be summed up as methods devised to carry seekers ‘out of time’ (and space). However, recently I have had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with the pioneering work of the noted physical chemist, Ilya Prigogine, which has radically altered the idea I had of science. Progogine, I came to discover – with a certain satisfaction – is obsessed with time as I am; and moreover, he has the same complaint about science as I have regarding spirituality: its denial of time and the contradiction this introduces in its search for truth.

Let me quote certain passages from Prigogine’s interview with OMNI (May, 1983). The interviewer questions him about his methods of discovery and his early experiences as a scientist who was decidedly a ‘nonconformist’. What I shall quote will certainly convince the reader that in the world of science, Prigogine has faced the same resistance that my work faces in the world of spirituality, where my occupation with time is often labelled ‘unspiritual’ or ‘mental’.

Can you recall a particular moment when you had a flash of insight into a specific problem you were working on?

   

Well, I always remember with pleasure my first work on non-equilibrium thermodynamics, in 1946, when I realized that non-equilibrium might be a source of organization and order. I was very, very happy to have this idea, which has never left me. Perhaps in science, at some point, there is a close relationship between who you are and what you try to do. Science is a much less objective enterprise than often assumed. It’s true you need some tools. You need to write down your findings and convince yourself and others. But the driving force for new ideas has to be a deep personal involvement in the problems you’re working on.

Are you an intuitive person?

Oh yes. For me mathematics is only a tool to write down my ideas so that in the long run they can be communicated. I say ‘in the long run’ because in my history all of the ideas I have proposed have been poorly accepted.

What was the scientific climate like when you first began to study time?

Well, quite naturally I was interested in the reaction of well-known scientists to this line of research. Their reaction was uniformly negative. It was in 1946 or 1947 when one of the most famous scientists attending the lecture I gave stood up and asked, ‘Why is this young man devoting his interest to irreversible causes? Irreversible causes are just illusory. Time is just a parameter, so forget about it.’ I was so stunned by this reaction that I was unable to get up and respond. But I happen to be very stubborn; so I continued. Today the situation has changed quite a bit. Time has become an essential factor in elementary particles as well as cosmology.

You were a nonconformist, a dissident. How did you muster up the conviction to go against the prevailing ideology?   

I would say, again, this probably corresponds to a deep psychological element that isn’t easy to make explicit. The attitude of Einstein toward science, for example, was to go beyond the reality of the moment. He wanted to transcend time. But this was the classical view. Time was an imperfection and science a way to get beyond this imperfection to eternity. Einstein wanted to travel away from the turmoil, from the wars. He wanted to find some kind of safe harbour in eternity. For him science was an introduction to a timeless reality beyond the illusion of becoming.

My own attitude is very different because, to some extent, I want to feel the evolution of things. I don’t believe in transcending, but in being embedded in a reality that is temporal.

There is no need to go into further details of the work of this notable scientist. If desired, the reader can pursue the study via his latest book, in the English translation entitled, Order Out of Chaos, Bantam Books, 1984). I must point out, however, that in the above statements, Prigogine could be describing the attitude of traditional yogis or seekers on the spiritual path, and the ultimate goal they desire to attain. It is clear that, as Prigogine points out, even a scientist is necessarily influenced in his discoveries by the fibre of his own consciousness-being. Einstein, as probably all other scientists, was seeking a means to ‘go beyond’, to escape the cosmic and earthly dimensions, so painful and apparently unredeemable; just as the practitioners of yoga do, the seekers after nirvana and Samadhi. In the world of science it would appear, time and all that it engenders is an illusion. In the Commentaries on The Magical Carousel, Chapter X), I have discussed in depth this position, in particular concerning the theories of Einstein.

It is evident that the life and work of a scientist like Prigogine conspires to demonstrate that the crux of the human dilemma, lodged at the root of all the known spiritual enquiries and systems, was, in its later stages, transported into the heart of the scientific enquiry. This fact, somewhat of a revelation for me, demonstrates in a most emphatic manner that the real and only answer to this problem lies indeed in a synthesis that carries us beyond both science and spirituality.

In my article, ‘The Supramental Synthesis’, I referred to the Mother’s perceptions in this regard, which determined the beginning of certain insights into the new cosmology. Without referring to the details constituting each enquiry – the scientific and the spiritual – she made it clear that ‘something else’ was needed, that pursuing either way or method to its ultimate reaches would not suffice. Indeed, it is this aspect of the Supramental Manifestation that presents the imperative necessity to evolve a new language in order to distinguish it from traditional yogas and spiritual paths, a language that describes more faithfully the new experiences of the reality of our material world and the true foundations of this new consciousness that is being established on Earth, in and of time.

Yet, as the references to Prigogine’s work reveal; this action is certainly not restricted to any one sector or society or country, or any particular discipline in the quest for truth; or to any elite which, by virtue of its dedication to a realization of God as opposed to Mammon, entitles it to some privileged status. Rather, the Supreme Consciousness is working through inspiringly diversified channels. These may be few at present – all too few we are sometimes brought to lament – but nonetheless there are clear signs that an acceleration is in progress, and the Power is carrying us rapidly to new stages in the establishment of the supramental creation.

Prigogine’s comments expose a truly critical problem – inherent in both science and spirituality, and by consequence at the very root of the human malaise. This is the question of decay, degeneration, and ultimately death that all things born in time are subject to; the only secure fact of our human embodiment, it would seem, is the factor of an irrevocable march of time leading to inevitable death. From the moment of birth we progress toward our demise. The situation is so distressing and has reached such a desperate threshold that the utter purposelessness of such an existence – conditioned so thoroughly by the irreversibility of death – is likely to result in a global, collective suicide. The factor that stands behind and upholds the irrepressible arms race, for example, is this despair over a march of time that we cannot control, which moves us irrevocably toward a death we fear and can in no way avoid. This appears to be the sole purpose of birth.

Sri Aurobindo’s message to the world is the advent of a new way, an entirely new path for humanity. This path leads to a state of immortality. Thus the direction he provides is, quite logically, entirely different from all previous paths that sought in their entirety an escape from birth as well as death, an obliteration of the conscious Seeing Eye and a dissolution (nirvana) into the comforting transcendence of Nothingness. Though some fill this nothingness with fantasies of a blissful paradise, it is still distinctly ‘otherworldly’. But Sri Aurobindo takes us precisely into the core of this world of matter, and hence into the innermost recesses of time and not out of it. As Prigogine might explain it, ‘to be embedded in a reality that is temporal’.

Why is this so? Simply because if we speak of a transformation of matter as central to Sri Aurobindo’s revelation, then time is the indispensable ally in the task. His yoga rests in the secure womb of time, which in turn is the creative driving force behind evolution. Indeed, the last chapter of his The Synthesis of Yoga is aptly entitled ‘Towards the Supramental Time Vision’, which was to open the way to a formulation of his own yoga but which, as he stated, he had not had the time to present. He left us only with this hint that ‘a new vision of time’ would be a key.

Prigogine has described for us the reluctance of the scientific community to accept the place of irreversibility (the ‘arrow of time’, past-present-future) in its postulations. In the same light I shall now quote from a most interesting new publication on this very subject, consisting of dialogues between J. Krishnamurti and the physicist David Bohm. The book is very appropriately entitled The Ending of Time (Harper & Row, 1985). Of all the books I have read on this theme, certainly this particular collection of conversations offers the most dramatic revelation of the conundrum the world knows, engendered by the unwillingness of both the yogi and the scientist to face squarely the question of Time and find the true answer. What we have been witnessing throughout the ages is a shrinking from the problem and a maddening attempt to obliterate the individualised consciousness in order to step out of time and the entire universal creation – as if this were indeed possible – and thus escape the pain, the frustration, the exasperation that the certainty of death imposes and all the difficulties engendered by this ‘corruptible flesh’.

The problem lies in the fact that in so doing no attempt has been effectively made to understand what the real purpose of birth on this Earth, in this cosmos is. For surely the Supreme Consciousness that clearly upholds and controls the course of our lives and evolution, is not some impish, devilish, capricious God, who plays games with a hapless humanity to please and appease some insatiable sadistic hunger. Yet the way to learn what that true purpose is lies in a quest into time, rather than away from and beyond it, insofar as it is time alone that can reveal the sense of the evolutionary process.

What that sense is, Sri Aurobindo has indicated. Likewise, in my work with time via the practice of the integral and supramental yogas, I have been able to confirm those same discoveries. The present level of human evolution is a transitory passage to a higher poise. And rather than being a passage to death and total annihilation, our present Age is the glorious gateway to a splendid new future.

But it is time that offers this encouraging vision and caries us to this newness. Yet all the spiritual leaders insist that we go ‘beyond time’ in order to know God and attain liberation. Some do this openly, as we shall soon learn from the dialogue I will present between Krishnamurti and Bohm; others do it more covertly; and many without even realising that this is their aim. From The Ending of Time, the reader can assess how difficult a transition this is, and how utterly confused both the spiritualist and the scientist are at this point:

J. Krishnamurti: We have extended our capacities outwardly, and inwardly it is the same movement as outwardly. Now if there is no inward movement as time, moving, becoming more and more, then what takes place? Time ends? You see, the outer movement is the same as the inner movement.

David Bohm: Yes, It is going around and around.

JK: Involving time, If the movement ceases then what takes place?...Now if that movement ends, as it must, then is there really inward movement – a movement not in terms of time?...You see, that word movement means time. (pp.15-16)

Krishnamurti discloses here the correlation, quite logical, between time and movement. According to him, both must cease. In the course of his conversation with Bohm, he defines creation in matter, in particular in our physical bodies with all the elements they provide for experiencing life in the cosmos and on Earth, as being something of which we must rid ourselves. He makes this clear by distinguishing the mind as a property we must disconnect from the brain – the latter, the physical instrument provided for the purpose of enacting the commands of the mind on the physical plane (see VISHAAL 0/2), is hence thoroughly ‘in the mire’ as it were.

JK: My brain – but not my mind – has evolved. Evolution implies time, and it can only think, live in time. Now for the brain to deny time is a tremendous activity, for any problem that arises, any question is immediately solved.

…Now how are you going to open the door, how are you going to help another to say, ‘Look, we have been going in the wrong direction, there is really only non-movement; and if movement stops, everything will be correct?

…That is, mankind has taken a wrong turn, psychologically, not physically? Can that turn be completely reversed? Or stopped? My brain is so accustomed to the evolutionary idea that I will become something, I will gain something, that I must have more knowledge and so on; can that brain suddenly realise that there is no such thing as time? (p.18)

The next part of the dialogue specifically locates the conflict, which, according to Krishnamurti, lies between a brain that has evolved in time, and a mind that is supposedly free of time. Krishnamurti sees this as the root of the problem. However, as far as I can perceive, the conflict is not in a temporal/atemporal dichotomy, but rather in the fact that Krishnamurti is an embodied consciousness like all of us, inhabiting a physical body which is his instrument of perception and his means of participating in this evolutionary and spiritual adventure – and yet, this instrumentation is being wholly denied. To me, the problem is a perception that places us at odds with not only the bodies we inhabit but with out total habitat – the Earth and cosmic dimension. For time, movement, are the underlying truths of our world. What Krishnamurti is describing in this dialogue is the very problem I have been revealing as the root of the species’ extreme distress: the quest that is intended to carry us beyond this dimension we are born into, as the only means of escaping from a pain that we cannot understand in its true perspective and hence overcome within the legitimate boundaries provided us as an evolving species on this particular planet, Earth. And contrary to what Krishnamurti suggests, this is the attitude that is the ‘wrong turn’ humanity took; yet that very ‘wrong turn’ is precisely the remedy he is offering. That is, his solution of seeking to stop time and movement IS THE WRONG TURN, and it was taken many millennia ago, and is the focus of every spiritual discipline and religion the world knows.

The answer lies here, in time. Not out of it. Indeed, embedded deep in the core of time, as I am sure Prigogine would agree.

DB: But I think you are implying that the mind is not originating in the brain. Is that so? The brain is perhaps an instrument of the mind?

JK: And the mind is not time.  Just see what that means.

DB: The mind does not evolve with the brain.

JK: The mind not being of time, and the brain being of time – is that the origin of the conflict?

DB: Well, we have to see why that produces conflict. It is not clear to say that the brain is of time, but rather that it has developed in such a way that time is in it.

JK: Yes, that is what I mean.

DB: But not necessarily so.

JK: It has evolved.

DB: It has evolved so it has time within it.

JK: Yes, it has evolved, time is a part of it…Can the brain itself see that it is caught in time, and that as long as it is moving in that  direction, conflict is eternal, endless? You follow what I am saying?...Has the brain the capacity to see in what it is doing now – being caught in time – that in the process there is no end to conflict? That means, is there a part of the brain which is not of time? (pp.19-20)

The problem becomes acute when the exchange between these two eminent men produces these memorable lines:

DB: You see, to go further, I think one has to deny the very notion of time in the sense of looking forward to the future, and deny all the past.

JK: That’s just it.

DB: That is, the whole of time.

JK: Time is the enemy. Meet it, and go beyond it. (pp.21-22)

This represents the classic postulation of the theory of Illusionism, be this in the realm of spirituality or science. There is something fundamentally, radically, pathetically wrong in a quest that places us in the necessity of denial of our experience of life, in a body, in material creation. Conditioned by this particular vision, the only possible and logical conclusion is that existence on this planet is simply without a rational purpose. The exchange between Krishnamurti and the physicist Bohm, reaches such extremes that toward the end Krishnamurti has Bohm ‘agreeing’ that the universe is not of time.

JK: I am asking you as a scientist, is this universe based on time?

DB: I would say no, but you see the general way…

JK: That is all I want. You say no! And can the brain, which has evolved in time…?

DB: Well, has it evolved in time? Rather, it has become entangled in time. Because the brain is part of the universe, which we say is not based on time.

JK: I agree.

DB: Thought has entangled the brain in time.

 JK: All right. Can that entanglement be unravelled, freed, so that the universe is the mind? You follow? If the universe is not of time, can the mind, which has been entangled in time, unravel itself and so be the universe? (p.220)

It is certainly difficult to understand how David Bohm, a physicist, can reconcile his lifetime involvement of the study of physical laws, for which measure is essential and temporal studies are paramount, with this perception: the universe is not of time. Furthermore, these dialogues reveal a rather incomplete understanding of just what the universe is; for it is not only the dense material substance that we can know by the external senses, but consists of other subtler dimensions that are all contained in this ‘universe’. Mind and the planes which it rules are just as much ‘of the universe’ as the physical brain. And hence mind is also ‘of time’. While we are on this planet, the brain and mind must work together in order to provide us with an instrument that harmonises our consciousness-being with the laws of time and evolution consonant with Earth’s position in the solar system, a penetrating study of which reveals the purpose of this evolving species that has been so meticulously equipped with the proper instruments to allow for this conscient experience of oneness with our total habitat, in a continuous evolution toward higher embodied states of being.

I believe these extracts from The Ending of Time have demonstrated more clearly than any material appearing so far in the spiritual or scientific world that the root of humankind’s dilemma is this misguided quest, which over the millennia has sought to carry the human being in the direction beyond the lawful condition of his embodiment. Above all, it is the pernicious misinterpretation that the origin out of which material creation has emerged is a void of nothingness, and that this void, this nothingness is the ultimate attainment in one’s quest, which has done the most damage. This situation is poignantly conveyed in Krishnamurti’ s own words:

'…to be free of becoming? That is the root of it. To end becoming…. Of course, there is only complete security in nothingness!' (p.257)

To put it succinctly, this is nothing other than the denial of the Mother, of materia, of the fullness of that womb of creation, and that Vedic Divine Measure that the Mother laboured so intensely to unveil on Earth as the planet’s deepest secret and reason for being. David Bohm has recently presented his new theory of physics, the ‘implicate order’. In our terms, enfolding would be involution; and unfolding, evolution. But surely one has the right to question his position as a scientist, since all this ‘order’ implies the active participation of movement and time. It would appear then that we are here faced with a paradoxical split: on the one hand there are his statements in this dialogue with Krishnamurti to the effect that ‘the universe is not of time’, implying that time only exists as a distortion of the brain in one’s psychological experience, not elsewhere in the universe or otherwise; on the other hand, he presents a new theory of physics, an implicate order which demands the intrinsic instrumentation of time. This would appear to reflect the same dichotomy, and in some cases downright schizophrenia, that characterises the acute malaise of our times, discernible in practically every sphere of our collective and individual lives. Above all, with such a philosophy as one’s background, it is understandable that scientists are assiduously working to present us with greater and better means of total destruction. Why not? Insofar as it is all nothing but illusion in any case?

In concluding, this dialogue calls to mind the experiments carried out at the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute (1983), in which hypnosis was used to erase a person’s time-sense. A group of college students were given suggestions while under hypnosis that upon awaking they would have no past or future, or sometimes no time at all. The effect on these patients was most disturbing; some turned catatonic, others behaved like schizophrenics. The conclusion was that life must have a direction provided by its ‘arrow of time’ in order for it to be worth living; and that people who are given a present but without the past and future, become preoccupied with death and behave schizophrenically.

I feel that if one were to pursue the path laid down in The Ending of Time, the results would be similar if not identical to these experiments. While it is simply an intellectual exercise and remains on the level of philosophical banter, no serious harm is done. Nonetheless, when spiritual authorities encourage people to embark upon a quest of this nature – and Krishnamurti’s credentials in this regard are certainly some of the best – then the matter requires serious deliberation. It can be emphatically stated that these old ways, these obsolete perceptions that have been pursuing us like draining phantoms throughout the ages, can in no way bring us into harmony with life, as a civilisation, and above all, solve the distressing impasse in which the human race presently lives.

This is the Age of Supermind. Sri Aurobindo has often described the Supermind as the only reconciler of paradoxes. Are not Prigogine and Stengers in their book, Order Out of Chaos, anticipating the same advent when they write

‘We are now entering a new era in the history of time, an era in which both being and becoming can be incorporated into a single non-contradictory vision.’

The answer lies, as the Mother has suggested, in a third poise. Beyond both science and spirituality.

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology

© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet 1985

The Emerging Cosmos

                      Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Aeon Centre of Cosmology

Kodaikanal, India

   September, 1986

   

   ‘At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis

     in which is concealed a choice of its destiny…’

          Sri Aurobindo

The malaise of our civilisation is not an inchoate or unpredictable development. Rather, it is the logical, foreseeable result of thousands of years of partial and ineffective spiritual visions and incomplete philosophical systems. These have always been the driving force behind the evolution of higher mental forms. Therefore, if our civilisation stands at a critical juncture at present, it is not in the secular and scientific domain that we must search for the cause of the decay. We must discover what has been lacking in the dimension of existence that moulds the more external and material patterns which condition life on this planet.

Once the root of the problem is located in its true area of causation, necessarily a change must be introduced in that sphere before the more external levels can be influenced. Thus if we can locate the root cause of the decay in that more essential domain, our task of bringing about a change in the individual and in society and of establishing a new world order on Earth is greatly facilitated.

Indeed, the crux of the problem lies here: for thousands of years sages, saints, yogis, philosophers, and men and women of wisdom have described the purpose of birth on this planet as simply a passage to a reality beyond not only our planetary home but entirely out of the cosmic dimension. The course our civilisation has taken can therefore be directly connected to this factor. The influence a vision of this nature has wielded has been devastating—for it has carried the planet and its multiple societies to the brink of total annihilation.

We may call this development a conspiracy of the spiritual elite which gradually influenced the whole tenure of life on Earth, spreading its tentacles of influence through religions and philosophical systems during the past several thousands of years, but now through scientific, political and socio-economic systems. The latter can invariably trace their inspiration to some spiritual or philosophical source. For even our most material ideologies that apparently deny the higher realities of existence and focus entirely on the physical dimension, have done so by virtue of a reaction to these more metaphysical postulations.

Many profound thinkers throughout the world have perceived that it is only a spiritual renaissance that can save our civilisation. Only if we attain a different consciousness, rooted in some higher seeing, can there be any real change, they feel. This may well be true, but what is not appreciated is that the present chaos is a direct outcome of our past mystic and spiritual perceptions. There are two aspects to this development. One is the course spirituality took in the West, which founded itself on a certain form of negation of life; and the other is the Eastern orientation, in its own way equally a denial of life.

In the West, out of denial and suffering there developed a certain strength. Believers had been encouraged to accept suffering as a way to God and the means to attain a heaven beyond this life. Indeed, life on Earth came to be considered a prison and the fall of the soul. Salvation, through negation of life, could only come in a beyond, namely in some transcendent Heaven. The final outcome of this negation has been the materialistic philosophies and political ideologies which the West has given to the world. Presently there is a clear dichotomy on the planet, whereby western civilisation has aligned itself clearly and decisively with what has come to be called in spiritual circles the ‘materialistic consciousness’.

However, in the East we find a similar denial of life, also as an outcome of its spirituality. Interestingly, this negation took hold of the consciousness of eastern wisemen at about the same time that a similar denial caught hold of their western counterparts. About the end of the first millennium Indian spirituality veered fully toward a quest for otherworldliness: the philosophies of the day made the conclusive proclamation that all creation in matter was an ‘illusion’, a deceptive veil that seekers of Truth must tear through in order to reach the immutable, immobile, trans-cosmic and static Brahman; or a Self devoid of all relations in this material web of time and space.

Thus at approximately the same period in history, the stamp of other-worldliness and denial of life and the planet’s own truth of being and purpose as a home of an evolving species, became firm pillars of our civilisation. This conditioned everything. This denial coloured all our perceptions and gradually moulded every pattern we evolved for the regulation of our individual and collective life. And what we are faced with today is simply the ultimate display of that denial and negation of life. The human being has carried the formula of this negation to its fullest extremes: What was seen as the highest spiritual poise has been carried over to the material realm, or the stage upon which all the ideals and more ethereal concepts of humankind are played out; with the predictable result that now science has furnished the race with the ultimate powers for its own destruction. If the only purpose of life on this planet is to escape it somehow, never more to return, then we are wholly justified in seeking means to destroy this springboard base as the ultimate and conclusive ‘solution’.

It is important to see clearly that the root of this problem is directly connected to the religious dogmas and spiritual visions that have conditioned our living since time immemorial. Spirituality is not a static expression. It has evolved pari passu with the material evolution. In fact, there is only ONE evolution, one principle evolving through the myriad forms that constitute our world. This ‘consciousness’ has two facets—material and spiritual. But both respond to the same underlying energy and drive.

Consequently, to posit the ultimate solution in either the spirituality we know today or in materialism, with its own brand of denial of life, is inadequate. Indeed, such attempts have consistently failed. Spirituality can only offer old solutions which were themselves largely the causes of the decay. Likewise, materialistic answers are prisoners of the same insufficiencies; and continuing as we are, they will drive us to a total destruction in order to play out the drama of denial of life that spirituality has constantly espoused in one form or another, under one disguise or another.

To accurately assess the situation it is required that we examine the problem deeply, in an effort to reach the core of the matter and discover the fount from which both science and spirituality receive their driving force. Therefore, it is necessary to perceive what stands behind the play of forces; and to do so we must come to a more enlightened understanding of the evolutionary process itself. This will provide us with a more holistic assessment of the condition of the highest instrument nature makes use of for the purpose of the evolution of the species, in order to effect this upward march to ever better forms of consciousness and life: the mental human being.

For this is the self-evident purpose of evolution. It is to bring forth evermore perfect forms in order to create more complex and sophisticated networks or patterns of structured energy that can express more harmonious states of consciousness-being. Our present stage is merely one step along the evolutionary way, albeit a decisive one. We have reached a major evolutionary turning point. There is a choice: Before us lies a totally new way of life and by consequence a new world order. For this, a finer, more refined instrument has to manifest. And this is the major focus of the present crisis. We are in the process of evolving a human instrument capable of sustaining the greater cosmic forces at play through life and matter on this planet, without experiencing destructive collapse of energies or succumbing to the old ways of escape through outdated solutions and methods the world has known until now.

The human instrument as it is presently constituted pivots a void. At its centre lies a ‘black hole’ into which energies collapse, cave in, dissolve; resulting ultimately in decay and death. And out of this condition of the instrument, through which the human consciousness perceives the reality beyond, came the projection of a world in chaos and collapse and hence the perception that salvation, of whatever order and under whatever guise, lay beyond this material universe and, above all, away from this woeful planet Earth. The demon of the drama was seen to be the senses, which wisemen understood to be the limiting factor which distorts a reality that somehow could be disconnected from the body and experienced separately, free from our physical organs of perception and hence disengaged from the world of material creation, out of which and within which these senses have evolved. Thus, ways were devised to liberate the seeker from the physical, sensual instrument, limited by its own apparently untransformable insufficiencies.

To be more specific, such projections and perceptions of our condition are the logical outcome of a species ill-poised, but for reasons quite different than those given in current religious, mystic and spiritual explanations. The human being has an off-centre pivot of his bodily instrument, which results in a distorted perception of our world; but which is, paradoxically, caused by the perception itself. Consequently, to alter that perception it is required that concurrently we shift this axis of being—in the species—and allow evolution to carry us to a new and higher destiny.

The human instrument, an intrinsic part of the solar system and the universal harmony, is structured energy just as any other microcosmic or macrocosmic body. The human being has its ‘axis’ also, around which the individual frame is organised and because of which a separate entity can come into existence and sustain itself without dispersion, adding to this magnificent display of multiplicity within unity, which is the key feature of our material world. But because we are as yet merely a transitional species, albeit evolving to a higher form, the present ‘axis’ and its location within the body, which has come into being in accordance with certain evolutionary laws, encourages atavism as the single most important driving force of the species.

Over the ages, wisemen, philosophers, seers, mystics, have sought through various means to alter this condition. In place of the inertia of atavism they have sought to install a higher purpose. But the inadequate condition of the instrument through which perception is made, provided only a partial understanding of the problem; and hence the techniques which were devised in order to help the human being to find release from this limiting function were in themselves inconclusive and did nothing to alter in any way conditions on the planet. Matters progressively worsened, until finally, seeing the gravity of the situation, all those who in some way have been concerned with this problem, came to a dramatic impasse. Finding that it was apparently impossible to change this evolutionary determinism, all spiritual and religious paths proffered methods of escape from the ‘coils of this corruptible flesh’ as the only way to salvation, and to seek dissolution of the consciousness in a transcendent Beyond or a nirvanic Void. Not only has this done nothing to change conditions on Earth, it has complicated the task of discovering the solution. And finally we find ourselves, as a species, facing possible annihilation.

Let us demonstrate the subtle ways in which this notion of irredeemability has penetrated the thinking of even those philosophers whom one would expect to perceive the position differently, primarily because they are indefatigably engaged in the task of instructing men and women the world over on the ways to a better life. But a better life where? If it is here, on this planet, then the flaws that emerge in these teachings must be pointed out, which will serve to expose the fact that on the basis of just such erroneous visions the human condition is what it is and cannot hope to change. Rather, the condition becomes compounded.

To illustrate, we may quote a statement of one of the most eminent thinkers of our times, the late J. Krishnamurti: ‘Truth cannot be exact. What can be measured is not truth.’ (Krishnamurti’s Notebook, Harper & Row, 1976, p.24)

This declaration is sure to appeal to all those who have become disenchanted with life in the body and in the material universe of which measure is the salient feature, and who have subsequently posited the goal of their quests in some extra-cosmic heaven or transcendent Beyond. For, what is Krishnamurti really stating?

It is simply this: the higher reality is not of this world, measureable in time and space, and any such attempt to find truth within this material (measureable) universe is futile. Hence this statement is a denial of life and fosters a totally divisive consciousness (certainly not the aim of his teaching efforts on the surface), whereby truth is OUTSIDE of time and space and hence beyond our world. God, the supreme Reality, or Truth is not, according to Krishnamurti, found in what is measurable.

It is this sort of postulation that has carried us to the point of such a tremendous evolutionary crisis. And lamentably, it is men and women concerned pre-eminently with the spiritual well-being of humankind who have contributed most to this situation, either by encouraging the faithful to live rightly and morally—but only for the purpose of reaching ‘heaven’ after death; or else by subtly and more often unknowingly, as in the case of Krishnamurti, consolidating the perception of an untransformable, irredeemable material creation, into which the soul and spirit of the human being has fallen and out of which some form of escape must be found in order to know truth in its transcendent, pristine and uncontaminated purity.

Krishnamurti provides us with another example of the way in which this vision has permeated the intelligentsia, in quarters that one could not have anticipated. Of late two books have appeared with transcripts of his conversations with the physicist David Bohm. It is interesting to observe that Krishnamurti succeeds in carrying Bohm, a physicist and hence a person supremely trained in the art of Measure, into his vision of a featureless void, in which time is an illusion and there is no becoming. A portion of their conversation will suffice to illustrate the nature of the problem:

JK: I am asking you as a physicist, is this universe based on time?

DB: I would say no, but you see, the general way…

JK: That is all I want. You say no! And can the brain, which has evolved in time…?

DB: Well, has it evolved in time? Rather, it has become entangled in time. Because the brain is part of the universe, which we say is not based on time.

JK: I agree.

DB: Thought has entangled the brain in time.

JK: All right. Can that entanglement be unravelled, freed, so that the universe is the mind? You follow? If the universe is not of time, can the mind, which has been entangled in time, unravel itself and so be the universe?

And further on, Krishnamurti makes this revealing statement:

‘…to be free of becoming? That is the root of it. To end becoming…   Of course, there is only complete security in nothingness!’ (The Ending of Time, Harper & Row, 1985)

This clearly, is the perception that must change if at all a new species and a new world order can safely take their place upon the planet for which they are destined. This calls for a complete readjustment in the ‘lens of our seeing’, precisely our ‘instrument of measure’, whereby the Earth comes into focus not as some eternal, irredeemable Hell that a chastising Creator has condemned us to, but rather the planet that serves a noble purpose in the cosmic order. This purpose is to evolve continuously higher and better forms of life. At present the human being is in transition toward a new condition. The breakdown we witness about us, inclusive of the marvels of technology that the human mind has brought into being, is an indication of that new order that is arising. The axis of the human instrument is being encouraged to shift to a higher pivot, whereby the present atavism is no longer a rigid cross to which we are nailed as a race. Rather, the new species is liberated from this compelling drive and begins then a more conscious participation in this grand act of Becoming through which a new instrument is being wrought. But for this to occur, the orientation of our quest and its consequent goal, based on a truly new perception of the higher reality of existence, must shift. The direction must cease to be otherworldly, no matter how camouflaged this may be, as noted by the example furnished above. The answer lies here, on Earth, in the body—but transformed by the power of a new seeing.

How is this achieved? The new axis is not metaphysical. It is a pivot that comes into being in accordance with precise evolutionary laws involving time. By working with time in a particular manner, it is possible to restructure the consciousness, and ultimately the physical being, around a higher pivot. This cannot be accomplished while religions and the old spirituality block the process by emphasis on a metaphysical experience that disengages the human being from any spiritually and materially meaningful contact with the physical world, and consequently absolves him from any responsibility therein. According to these now outdated ways, the purpose of life was to somehow find escape from it, it either expiate one’s sins and reach heaven, or to work out a karma and thereby become freed from taking birth again on this woeful planet. In the midst of such a conditioning, it was not possible to alter the evolutionary pattern, insofar as the means to do so, in particular a conscious work with time, were denied their truth and the part they played to attain a higher reality.

The new world is a world in which both the being and the becoming are harmonised in the vision. Therefore Sri Aurobindo describes the choice of destiny that faces mankind at this crisis point as an accepting and embracing precisely of the becoming, as the means to attain the ultimate apotheosis, an evolutionary leap to a totally new status:

‘The significance of our existence here determines our destiny: that destiny is something that already exists in us as a necessity and a potentiality, the necessity of our being’s secret and emergent reality, a truth of its potentialities that is being worked out; both, though not yet realised, are even now implied in what has been already manifested. If there is a Being that is becoming, a Reality of existence that is unrolling itself in Time, what that being, that reality secretly is, is what we have to become, and so to become is our life’s significance.’

                        (The Life Divine, Chapter 28)

While the old degenerates into chaos and begins its collapse, there is simultaneously a work in progress to evolve a new species. The process entails, however, a laying of correct foundations. That is, a new ‘blueprint’ is being evolved, the lines of which are drawn by time, the power of evolution for the gestation of any new form.

The new ‘blueprint’ being established at present is a pattern of harmony. Indeed, its inspirer is the closest, most complete pattern of harmony that we can observe and of which we are an intrinsic part. It is the solar system—seen with a new eye and an entirely new and different instrument of perception and measurement. This blueprint of a new consciousness-being will provide the basis for a new world order. The outcome is a planetary society, inspired in its governance by the very harmonics of our System and in particular founded upon a vision that sees and accepts the Earth as the place where upon this progression is destined to occur.

But foremost in this evolutionary leap is the question of the purpose of evolution; and by consequence the purpose of our planetary home within the scheme of the cosmic order. It is clear that while we continue to turn to the old spirituality for solutions to our present state of collapse, we are only compounding that collapse, insofar as all spirituality considers life in this cosmos to be a fall and posits salvation in some form of a Beyond, unevolving and static. The dramatic shift that is required is then the complete refocusing of the lens we are provided with for evolution on Earth, and the resultant consciousness that introduces an entirely new direction in our perceiving. We cease to deny life and material creation as channels for expression of the highest truth principle. Rather, we see these as instruments on Earth of what Sri Aurobindo has called, the ‘life divine’.

There is a tested method to establish this new blueprint. It utilises time as the creative power for this revolutionary activity. By a specific knowledge of the mechanics of our solar system and the relation of the planetary harmony to time, as experienced on Earth and in the human body, a shift is brought about in the consciousness-being of the individual practitioner, whereby a new pivot is established in the body, no longer prisoner of atavistic drives but responsive to a higher purpose. On that basis a truly new harmony establishes itself within the individual and his society. There is no longer a collapse of energies but rather a sort of mini-solar system manifests as a nuclear compound from where new influences emerge. Gradually these accumulate and extend and eventually draw into the orbit of the new System an increasingly wider sphere; until finally the entire planet becomes the home of this higher planetary society.

What evolves is therefore neither a new spirituality nor a new science or material ideology. It is something beyond all these known methods but that miraculously harmonises and integrates all the expressions of mind, life, and matter in a splendid act of synthesis. The truth of our world is a magnificent manifoldness, expressing an exquisite diversity. But this multiple diversity is upheld and sustained by a power of integration and arises in a field of oneness—just as our solar system is an expression of a superb manifold harmony within an integrating oneness.

This is an evolutionary process which respects the being as well as the becoming. Hence it does not seek to obliterate the cosmic harmony which is rooted in time and is the instrument for the Becoming. Rather, it evolves by the aid of those laws. Thus we can applaud Ilya Prigogine when he declares, ‘I want to feel the evolution of things. I don’t believe in transcending, but in being embedded in a reality that is temporal.’ (OMNI, May, 1983)

The critical crossroad we have reached is mirrored in the expansion of this very solar system to the observing eye of humankind. During the past several hundred years we have seen the System increase by three planets. While over this same period, pari passu with this expansion, the consciousness of the species and the condition of our civilisation have also undergone singular alterations. An acceleration in the evolution of consciousness never before witnessed has set in during this period, particularly heightened in our century. But what is required now, that ‘choice of destiny’, as Sri Aurobindo has called it, is a conscious collaboration with this process. Prior to this critical juncture the human being was carried along on the crests of the evolutionary wave in an unconscious fashion. But now, with the birth of a new consciousness and species, poised differently, centred on the higher axis of being, the possibility arises that we may collaborate consciously, guided by the harmonics of the very cosmos we inhabit and stand in awe of: an applied cosmology, not another speculative theory.

In the midst of the chaos we see about us a sublime cosmos emerges. Its life does not depend upon the old in the midst of which it stands. It emerges as the old crumbles, uncontaminated by the morose suggestions of purposelessness that vitiate the atmosphere of this dying world. It emerges because conditions for it are determined by higher evolutionary laws, and is hence a thing inevitable in the history of our planet’s time; even as the present mental being was an unavoidable and necessary circumstance, a step along the way but nothing more, and nobly played its role in the evolution of consciousness. The foundations of this new and higher species are solidly laid in the stratum that is indestructible. But not disengaged from material creation. Rather, these new foundations are rooted in matter and they form the basis for a new species and society.

© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet