I would like to bring this series to a close not with another Journal entry but with a summary of sorts based on the responses to what I had been recording after an important breakthrough. The realisation that contraction is a property of the Zero was well known before this latest act of seeing. What changed was so simple that I cannot now understand how it was missed for so long. Being a ‘cosmic direction’ (along with expansion) proper to the Zero, and the latter being the compaction of the three times, it should have been obvious that contraction was on the other side of what science calls the event horizon; or else beyond the borderline of a singularity. Thus, the entire event occurs on the other side. And it is constant, ceaselessly creative. Therefore it can easily qualify for the elusive cosmological constant. It is through contraction that the properties of the Zero are carried over into the material world and indeed become the upholder of the entire manifestation ‘on this side’.

When passage is made into the Zero, beyond the material threshold, it is true that the mathematical formulae and laws of physics cannot be used to measure and to explain the process. Unity is the keyword and I stated that the Mathematics of Unity is required in order to reach the essence of Being. This same system may be used on this side of the cosmological threshold, and by reduction to a seed digit something of that essential being can be explained; moreover, this allows for applicability.

Important to note is that the realm of essentiality is known as the solar world because the Sun (0) is the source of essence. When that Essence is drawn into our material universe of 9, by processes of yoga devised for that purpose, the individual who has attained this new balance or poise of consciousness-being necessarily becomes governed by laws that hold in the solar world.

Sri Aurobindo’s mission to bring ‘heaven’ to Earth, or to establish that Kingdom here, implies this shift which then places the individual capable of the realisation here – but not here; that is, the laws operating for a creature bounded by the pivot at the sex centre. with its atavistic drives and ego-dependency, are inoperable when the solar world becomes established on Earth. This means that the laws of essentiality are the protection required to allow the new creation to be born in this material dimension and to grow and ultimately flourish. Without the realignment and crosswise new balance that brings into being a true Centre, no such protection exists. The Mother was especially concerned about this aspect of the Truth-Conscious manifestation: how would it survive in a world hostile to the higher things?

But this would be a contradiction in terms because once centering of the New Way has occurred that ‘point that has filled the Void’ cannot be withdrawn. Practically, this means that a mortal creation pivots a void where the fullness of the Centre should be. This situation not only furthers atavism but is also the reason why a creation orbiting such a void must collapse into that emptiness.

The goal of the new creation is therefore to fill the Void. This can be done by centering and realignment. In symbology it is described as the equal-arm or the off-centre cross. Where the two arms join at their exact centre the Point emerges that fills the Void.

Once accomplished, the laws of the Zero-Centre prevail, and they carry us to immortality. When contraction in the Zero is seen and the cosmological constant is realised as just that, a constant, then we are certain that the kingdom of the Sun has established itself on Earth and eventually must take over her evolutionary process. Then, Time, evolving out of its Zero-Womb, is the motor for what extends through the speed of consciousness to establish the solar world on Earth.

Entrance into the Zero is cosmologically possible during the period known from ancient times as the Festival of Light. In Rome it was called the Saturnalia because that Cardinal Point is Capricorn, ruled by Saturn. In terms of the harmony of our solar system and the laws of equivalence where one day equals one year, the fourth Cardinal position is Cosmic Midday. The pertinent image is the Sun directly overhead, casting no shadows – i.e. a shadowless realm or existence, with all that that implies and which the Tradition calls the Golden Age, or in India the Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth-Consciousness. It is said that the Gods walk the Earth in the Golden Age; but what is meant is that the solar world (Swar) has ‘descended’ bringing into the evolutionary process its higher laws, implanting a new divine Purpose in the heart of humanity – indeed, raising the level from a mental to a supramental species.

When it is known that the laws of physics break down ‘on the other side’, we understand that the answers we seek regarding the world and evolution cannot come through the contemporary disciplines by which we probe the cosmos from this side. Integrality and unity are the keywords in the New Way, both of which are impossible to realise through contemporary science. It is evident on the other hand that these realisations are part and parcel of the solar world – its very essence in fact. Thus, to attempt to use features of the New Way to validate the discoveries of the scientist is misplaced. The New Way is its own science. Born of the truth-conscious solar world, it alone explains the laws and functioning of anything to do with that higher realm – i.e. the appearance of Vishnu’s Avatars. They are known as offspring of the Time-Spirit; as such and considering that Time arises in that womb of essentiality, we could call these emanations offspring of the Sun as well. Moreover, as the only physical embodiments of that solar essentiality, it is not surprising that the higher laws are revealed through their very births recorded in universal calendar time – a method verifiable by all.

There is always a tendency in the human being to measure or evaluate anything new on the basis of the Known. One trained in science will seek to use science as the barometer: everything else must make sense in relation to that. Or else, as we have witnessed from time to time, there is an attempt to gauge the value of the New Way on the backdrop of a commitment to a path of yoga or a philosophy that had arisen during previous Ages. The psychotherapist will do the same by isolating certain features of the Integral Yoga which seem to include certain tenets of psychology. In doing so these attempts to understand a system complete in itself by reference to any of the known disciplines would be placing severe limitations on the New Way, the very limitations that have stymied progress along the lines mentioned. To put the lesser in its rightful place within the whole a higher synthesis is required which by its very nature of integrality can make sense of what lies at levels beneath it. That higher synthesis is then all-embracing and brings completion to the analysis which had been withheld in previous lower hemisphere attempts to understand our world. The imagery of The Magical Carousel can help us appreciate what it means to have an all-encompassing vision: it is as if we stand on the mountain top with Omanisol, beneath whose feet lies all of material creation.

The question of a universal calendar merits clarification since it becomes the tool for verification rather than the complicated mathematics suited to an elite. Such a calendar encapsulates for the masses the cosmic harmony that is a direct extension of the harmonies of the solar world. This means that the rhythms of our third planet from the Sun will express for us that essentiality through the lived experience of her orbital dance around the luminary. Like a carousel horse she experiences several motions which are her unique way of giving expression or form to her upholding Essence. Similar to a gestation, the Earth holds these rhythms within herself to become for us the embodiment of the solar essence. Therefore, to ignore her rhythms and pulsations in favour of heavenly or extra-cosmic harmonies far removed from her experience, is to do a serious disservice to our Mother. A true calendar must therefore regulate these terrestrial harmonies as they unfold in the course of the Earth’s orbit of the Sun in 365 days, which are then divided into sections marked off eternally and accurately by the Cardinal Points four times a year. These rhythms are simple, visible and materially provable.

Because the laws of the solar world operate in a true Centre, Skambha can help those who come into its atmosphere to get in touch with their essential being. The practical result is a re-focussing of their lens of perception within the context of that essentiality, into a world of unity beyond the binary constraints we are accustomed to. Centred thus, all then serves the purposes of the One – positive or negative. Focussing the lens assists us in ‘seeing in understanding’ whereby we are able to discriminate between the two and gradually reach a poise of consciousness that furthers only the positive and does not require the negative any longer. This is what is meant by standing beneath the ray of the midday Sun, casting no shadows. The Mother captured this poise in her plan of the inner chamber and knew from the outset that it was the ‘symbol of the future realisation’.