‘…But there is in taking this turn the danger that he may confuse his own disguised or sublimated ego or an interior power with the Lord and substitute its demands for the supreme dictates. He may fall into a common ambush of this lower nature and distort his supposed surrender to a higher Power into an excuse for a magnified and uncontrolled indulgence of his own self-will and even of his desires and passions.
‘A much worse thing may befall those who break something of the human bonds but have not the purity and have not the knowledge, for they may become instruments, but not of the Divine; too often, using his name, they serve unconsciously his mask and black Contraries, the Powers of Darkness.’
Sri Aurobindo
The Synthesis of Yoga
A word must be said about the question of alignment and its place in the transformation the evolution of consciousness is experiencing.
It is clear that the Yoga described in the Rigveda and which has been largely ignored by researchers, even those among Hindu pundits, was foremost a method to secure a special alignment which would allow the practitioner to ‘become the Sun’. Since several features of the luminary of our system are known, we are in a position to understand certain key elements involved in this alignment of consciousness in the ancient path. Principal of these is necessarily the Sun’s centrality. That is, its dominant position in our solar system, the king, as it were, of the planetary hierarchy. Indeed, so obvious was this feature that from ancient times societies and civilisations modelled themselves on this pattern, with the zodiac as backdrop. Consequently, the 5th sign Leo was not only ‘ruled’ by the Sun, it was also the sign of Kings, the ruler of the kingdom. In other words, this outstanding feature of centrality and lordship was not reflected in the ancient tradition by a special allocation, central to the body of knowledge transmitted in the zodiac. It was just one more sign, one more stage in the progression of 12 – if at all there was a vision of a unified flow through the signs. Indeed, this connected vision suffered irreparable damage by a linear perception which overtook the earlier seeing of wholeness.
Clearly there is a deficiency inherent in this paradigm. And it is reflected in the deficiency we observe in the human mental species. The progression of 1 to 12 with the Sun positioned at the 5th stage, as one among equals does not reflect the structure of our planetary system. But it does give a valid indication of something I have been stressing throughout my work: Humans are binary creatures, trapped in an off-centre alignment of consciousness, which in turn is reflected in the physical instrument. The binary, off-centre alignment of our bodies as humans in evolution determines the fact that each individual born into a body fashioned according to the actual human biological pattern cannot escape the inevitable, ineluctable finality of our sojourn on this planet – death. We are mortal, descendants of Martanda as he is known in the Rigveda, the ‘dead egg’. Or, in the more familiar contemporary paradigm of creation, we are daughters and sons of Eve, a mere ‘rib’ of Adam, and not the superior creation of Shiva/Shakti of the Ardhanarisvar Vedic iconography.
In ancient times on the subcontinent, this condition of the species was understood. Moreover, the path was mapped out for the ‘Aryan Warrior’ so that he or she might travel through the twelve signs, planes, stages and reach the 10th where the prize was Immortality. This was the summit of the path, the supreme achievement. The method to reach this pinnacle of Being was thoroughly worked out, veritably as a map by which the ‘journey’ could be undertaken with the certainty that moving through the darker realms which constitute the various ‘layers’ of human consciousness, the Aryan would be armed with this superior knowledge and thus find protection in this perilous adventure on the road to Swar, the Vedic ‘heaven’ or the realm of the truth-conscious Sun.
Thus, limitation to a system based on 12 was a feature of the ancient path. It describes therefore the same limitations in the human evolution, inasmuch as the zodiac is indeed a map of evolution. The 12 base, it needs to be pointed out, is the horizontal plane and dimension. However, this unidirectional base is insufficient to bring about an INTEGRAL development. And by this we mean a process that integrates both the individual and collective dimensions of the evolution of consciousness. That is, the One and the Many.
With a unidirectional base such as the one that prevailed in early Vedic times, this integral process could not be established. The reasons will be detailed in this study because having reached the point in our evolution of precisely that integral work, dissecting the innards of the former unidirectional condition will be of immense value in our present context. Moreover, it will help us understand in greater depth when certain thresholds were crossed which plunged Vedic civilisation into turmoil and on an apparent path of disintegration, resulting finally in invasions and conquests in our times. We will also delve more deeply into why this apparent disintegration had to come about. In the process, the future course will be clearer, our goal more luminous and hence the successful crossing to that Swar, that borderline, will be facilitated.
The period which will occupy our attention in this analysis is the millennium prior to our present 9th Manifestation which began in 234BC. The student will note, before all else that this time demarcation covers a certain particularly important epoch in the evolution of the civilisation of the subcontinent. It embraces the current 1500BC demarcation which all researchers ‘agree’ was the time of the alleged Aryan invasion of the subcontinent, or the beginning of a series of migrations of these Aryans supposedly from Central Asia or beyond, which, according to scholars of all hues, was the origin of all Vedic and Hindu culture and civilisation.
Fortunately that theory is now being demolished. We may safely state that its hold over the Indian intelligentsia has come to an end. The evidence in support of this theory is, in effect, non-evidence. And in this transitional period characterized by exposure, the principal target for this act perforce has been the Aryan Invasion Theory, inasmuch as it is the Big Lie, the central ‘knot’ at the root of the falsehood holding together the construction of the Lord of Nations, devised to subjugate ad infinitum the Indian people in order to secure the definitive demise of the Vedic Dharma.
In this issue, I am including as Appendix 1 my latest article on the subject, especially because it uncovers the hysteria my previous treatment has helped to provoke in the European Indologists’ camp, particularly my discussion of the role Germany has played in this great scholastic hoax via the colonial/Nazi combine.
Also to be noted is another central point I have highlighted in many of my published works on this theme, and in private correspondence with researchers of like mind who were key players in this revision of history. This concerns the unacceptability of 1500 BC as the time of this so-called invasion or migration. I have sustained that the hitherto almost total consensus that this was the date of composition of the Rigveda, the only extant document of the early Aryans, was a key feature in the scholastic, colonial hoax because only if this date was accepted could the hoax be perpetuated. Dislodging that linchpin would bring the entire edifice down.
Indeed, this part of my work has been taken up seriously and we read periodically of symposiums and seminars being held on this very theme: the unacceptability of the 1500 BC demarcation. The latest was a two-day symposium on Ancient Indian Chronology in January 1994, sponsored by the Birla Science Centre. In the estimate of scholars participating in this meeting, the date of the Rig Veda should be pushed back to approximately 3000 BC.
But the selection of 1500 BC, for whatever purposes, was not insignificant. About that time something did indeed occur in Vedic civilisation which had the inevitable effect of initiating a disintegration of the old forms of the system. That is, the 12-base paradigm seems to have received a critical blow then, whose repercussions have been felt from that time to the present, almost on the order of a slow, steady earthquake extended over the ages as if a millennium were 60 seconds of its revolutionising jolts. Indeed, it is by scrutinising these repercussions that we are able to draw certain conclusions as to what took place and when.
In this first degree of the Age of Aquarius, by retrograde motion through the Precession of the Equinoxes, we are experiencing a settling of the soil beneath us which had been shaken so deeply by the original ‘quake’ over two millennia ago. The upheaval that hit Vedic civilisation was what is universally held as the most significant contribution India is known to have made to the world of science: the discovery of the Zero.
In my yogic investigations into the transformational process alluded to in the Rigveda, I do not find evidence of the prominence of the Zero and the numerical system it gave rise to as its base. I find only that of 12 and thus the prominence of the 12 zodiacal signs, and, above all, the ecliptic itself as the foundation of the knowledge. Of foremost importance in the unidirectional twelvefold system is the fourfold division of the ecliptic – i.e., the four Cardinal Points, last of which is Capricorn; hence the prominence of the December solstice when the Light begins its increase, beckoning the Aryan Warrior to the Capricorn summit and the realisation of Immortality.
The revolutionising character of this discovery lies in this singular achievement: introduction, or unveiling, of the vertical direction. By this the dominance of the unidirectional base of 12 was dealt a first decisive blow and has never recovered since. Another direction was introduced but which would require at least two millennia to become integrated into the higher dimensions of the civilisation’s evolving consciousness and being. Its final amalgamation would depend on the next avataric appearance – precisely the 9th in the Hindu Line of Ten, insofar as the discovery of the Zero was the first prerequisite for that future appearance. Without the unveiling of the Zero, the 9th Avatar could not carry out his mission which hinged precisely on carrying the movement of consciousness across Time’s threshold, through his own death and rebirth, by virtue of which that very Zero would give forth the One. And thus the 9th Avatar, in an unbroken line of time would reappear as the 10th (10=1), as Kalki, in the 91st (9/1) year after his first appearance, 1872.
In ancient times there was only the horizontal line and hence the twelvefold base and the prevalence of the zodiac and the ecliptic as foundation for the knowledge. This formed the structural basis of the civilisation, traces of which are alive and vibrant even today. The Hindu temple as we know it and as it continues to be constructed, according to precise Scriptural designations, is a tool to connect the society and the individual to that circumscribing space which is divided into twelve parts, and then further subdivided into four. The latter then became the foundation of the chaturvarna, the fourfold caste system. Thus, in the Rigveda we find the first indication that this fourfold order was a firm part of the civilisation, and by deduction that the base of twelve prevailed, in the following verses:
…When they divided up the Purush,
into how many parts did they divide him?
What did his mouth become? What his arms?
What are his legs called? What his feet?
His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms
became the Kshatriya, his legs
the Vaishiya who plies his trade.
The Shudra was born from his feet…
But this, though providing a circular seeing (see, TVN 6/3, August 1991) and thus reflective of a form of unity, was still merely unidirectional; meaning that an entire dimension was hidden from the perception of the Rishi. The entire exercise, circular and whole as it may have been, was nonetheless limited to only one cosmic plane, – the horizontal. The base was thus 1 to 12. To be unveiled, realised, integrated was the vertical and the new base, 0 to 9.
This simple seeing was the earthquake that struck Vedic civilisation around the time of the purported Aryan invasion. A settling of the shaken up terrain, I repeat, is only being completed now, in our very century. This act of settling will be completed by the turn of the millennium. But meanwhile there remains much to be done in the realm of higher knowledge so that passage to a true new order will be successfully completed, ‘right on time’.
Pregnant Fullne at the Origin: Time’s Zero-Womb
The first imperative in this act of settling is to understand that any remaking of a civilisation such as the Vedic – i.e., based on higher knowledge – had to be done respecting the essence and demands of that original ‘seed’ the Vedic culture sprang from thousands of years ago. Just as a rose cannot evolve from the seed of a tree, similarly that Vedic ‘seed’ could never give rise to anything other than a creation of its own genus. In this light, it was decreed from the outset, from the first rending of the veils, or removal through Vedic yogic techniques of the ‘lid covering the Sun’, that this integral poise would one day come about. Not just for an individual, or an elite, a group of privileged individuals, but for the entire civilisation. Indeed, the special quality of that ‘seed’ was this integration of the Unity and the Multiplicity. It translated itself into a harmonisation of the Being and the Becoming in the course of time. Thus it was inevitable that the inadequacies of the original unidirectional base would force the issue when a critical threshold of time had been reached, and thereby oblige those early Rishis to push their realisation deeper and higher yet. The result was penetration into the Womb or garbha, as it is called in Sanskrit, – that is, the Zero. In that recondite dimension of Being there lay the spectacular realisation of Skambha, support of the worlds. The ‘womb’ held that sacred Child, the One, the Son.
We have verses of the Rigveda which have come to be called the Hymn of Creation. In my view these verses must be understood as a meticulous description of the plunge into the Core, into the Zero-Womb, or what lies beyond the threshold of the material universe as a permanent condition and not just a one-time ‘big bang’. Scholars vary somewhat in their translations of these verses. Therefore, I am including as Appendix 2 three translations in which certain discrepancies must be highlighted – namely those concerning the translation of the Sanskrit word abhu. Some scholars have translated this pregnant word as ‘the void’. But Raimundo Panikkar, though following suit, does mention in a footnote that the word signifies the transcendent Absolute. Indeed, it is this sort of discrepancy that throws light on the manner in which the Vedic emphasis on fulness and not emptiness as a primordial condition of being came to be distorted.
What is more than apparent from these verses, regardless of the translations, is that the Vedic seers were describing the contours of the experience which produced a penetration into what I have come to call the Zero-Womb, or the dimension before or beyond the Point, or the first manifestation of a spatial reality. They described the condition of compressed time, the womb of the Zero containing 9, 6, and 3. Out of this compression came the One ‘…who breathed without breath, by its own impulse’. Another important feature of these verses concerns the fact that the Seers saw this to be the origin of the horizontal dimension. Panikkar translates the significant passage as ‘…A crosswise line cut Being from Nonbeing’. This has been poorly rendered in Jeanine Miller’s translation as ‘Their vision’s rays stretched far’. Again we note that the former perhaps more literal translation is closer to the experience, inasmuch as the important factor to stress, as far as the purity of the Seeing is concerned, is the question of a horizontal dimension emerging from this ‘compression’. For this is indeed the dimension of manifestation of the One, born of the Zero-Womb of compressed time. On the other hand, V. Madhusudan Reddy translates this passage thus: ‘A ray stretched out that cut the Existent from the Non-Existent.’ While this too conveys the idea of an ‘above’ and a ‘below’, which the subsequent lines do indeed emphasise, I prefer the more literal translations because of their fidelity to an experience which is perforce beyond the scope of a translator. Therefore we look for a rendering which distorts as little as possible that experience. And at this point in time, when the contours of the original Seeing are known, these verses stand as a precious confirmation of the vigour of the Vedic Truth.
Another important passage, perhaps the most important of all, concerns the thrust of the movement of consciousness in discovery of this Truth. That is, it was not outward, it was not an experience that could come by a dissolution in a Beyond. Rather, it was a plunge within, and more precisely, into the heart. Thus, Miller translates the passage as, ‘Seers, searching in their heart’s wisdom, discovered the kinship of the created with the uncreated.’
Then we have Panikkar’s rendition, ‘The Seers, searching in their hearts with wisdom, discovered the connection of Being in Nonbeing.’
And finally there is Reddy’s, ‘The seers, having meditated in their hearts, discovered the connection of the Existent in the Non-Existent.’
We have three slightly different renditions, but all three indicate that the heart centre is involved in seeing this connection between the Existent and the Non-Existent, or the Manifest and the Unmanifest. Yet in their commentaries the translators are more concerned about the correct rendering of the lines immediately preceding these which state that in the beginning ‘desire’, or ‘love’ arose as the first impulse within. My point is that the more significant lines concern those which reveal that it is a plunge into the core which draws that all-important connection between this dimension and that which stands before and beyond. The ‘bridge’ is found there. It is important to emphasise this point because this is the channel, this is the key to the realisation. Not having brought out this point earlier has left a certain amount of confusion among seekers, and this has permitted a perversion of the Vedic Truth. The clarification of these simple and apparently unimportant lines helps us to discover that bridge and to reconstruct the process of creation, or the emergence of the One from the womb of the Zero. Just as the early Rishis did.
Thus in ‘seed form’ the realisation was done. That is, in the realm of the Zero, or the Being, the Unity. But what of the Becoming? How was that to be integrated, and by this we mean consolidated through the lived experience of the movement of that Zero-Unity?
It stands that since we are dealing with the vertical time direction, in contrast to the horizontal space direction, Time itself had to be the channel for the realisation. This means that Time’s movement would be the means to integrate the new dimension of itself. Thus, the evolution of that original seed-seeing could be meticulously monitored precisely via a higher understanding of time and its own transformation in the consciousness of the seeker from its poise of Destroyer to Ally. But when the great Quake struck in the latter part of the 8th Manifestation, we had no ‘becoming’ to serve as ally in the act of settling and re-ordering. Time itself was required, 2000 years or so, to be precise, or a full zodiacal Age in order to accommodate the new ingredients or energies the Quake had released which would compel, by their negative contributions, by exerting the required pressure via tension, the action of the Avatars, agents of that very Time-Spirit, to carry humanity beyond the Borderline.
Thus, the 9th Avatar’s appearance in 1872 initiated that grand march across the threshold of an Age and into the realm of the Zero, of Swar. Prior to his coming and the successful completion of that mission, the bridge connecting this human habitat to Swar was lacking. It was indeed a ‘heaven beyond’ and not of this Earth. The 9th Avatar’s mission was to create that bridge and thereby to bring that Heaven down to Earth. He completed this crossing 91 years after his birth in 1872. What is transpiring now is merely a final settling of the terrain, similar to the lengthy after-shocks of a mighty Uranian quake. These ‘shocks’ are the stirrings of the Becoming precisely so that the new order may be a faithful reproduction of that majestic Cosmic Truth, essence of the innermost Vedic ‘seed’ at the heart of the civilisation.
We could state quite accurately that the Vedic realisation which formed the basis of Hinduism and hence the prevalent culture on the subcontinent, was always incomplete. It was indeed merely the horizontal base, the heavenly circumscribing ecliptic of 12 divided into 4. Its sole purpose of existence was to provide the future One with a ‘womb’, whence he could be born. In other words, the Rigvedic creation hymn was equally a description of the origin of a civilisation. Vedic culture is thus the expression given to the compressed seed at the Origin. The gestation we are describing has been a long one. It has been a process straddling 8 Manifestations of 6480 years each. In 234 BC we reached the 0 Aries Point and the beginning of the final Round of 25,920 years of that long evolution through the 12 Manifestations. Humanity embarked then upon the last circumambulation of the Sun in the precessional movement of the Equinoxes. Approach to that Zero Point at the end of the Age of Aries brought the dawn of the new Seeing, truly Usha, the Divine Dawn, carried by Agni as the white Horse, across the twilight of an Age, for that 0 Aries point is indeed the Cosmic Dawn.
The beginning of the degeneration of the caste system was one of the evident signs that the former 12/4 base was receiving mighty shocks. The cause of this was not corruption of the Brahmin caste but rather the corrosion of every caste. With the introduction of the new direction, the vertical, prior to integration, nothing was ‘in its place’ insofar as time was required to lay these new and more complete foundations. The veils had been drawn aside, the Zero-Womb had been disclosed by the realisers, but its labyrinthine recesses were covered as yet in the tenebrous veils of the many layers of consciousness-being which had to be integrated by means of the precious power of the Becoming. In other words, the two feminine powers, the 6 and the 3, had to take their place in the action of time, providing the energy needed both to impel the movement forward, as well as to organise all the elements/energies drawn into the process. For while the 12 base steadies itself on the fourfold pillars, the 0 base requires the triadic powers of 9, 6, and 3. These three powers had to join in the labour so that ‘right on time’ the One would emerge from that cosmic Womb, and his birth would herald the arrival of the new age of the Supermind, the descent of heaven upon Earth. India, for the past 2000 years or so, has been carrying out this great labour for the world. And the work is done.
The Reign of the Usurpers
In this long passage of Time, in the course of illuminating the dark crevices of the Zero/Womb, usurpers have emerged to fill the void with their own brand of ‘truth’, with their ‘mixtures’, as the Mother called it. Indeed, from the very outset we encounter a series of usurpations, deviations, distractions, designed to draw the Aryan Warrior off course and abort ‘the Birth that fills that void’. All of these attempts, straddling an entire Age and more vigorously encountered in this century, have failed. The work is done, the Birth completed, the void is filled.
Nonetheless, the act of settling which I have described above, concerns a very careful and thorough act of exposure. Its purpose is precisely to drain the Usurper of energy. All the folds of the Womb have to be illumined so that the Shadow cannot continue to usurp energies which must now serve exclusively the purposes of the One.
The act of exposure, a large part of which I have been documenting in this series, carries us back to the original realisation of the Zero, sometime in the last millennium of the 8th Manifestation. This seeing was so decisive and overwhelming that thereafter it became ‘the secret’ of all the cultural expressions which the civilisation produced. We find it in music, captured in the drone or sruti, the silent Sound, or the sound-axis that renders the Silence full and not empty; we find it in architecture in the Hindu temple’s axis, shooting up from the centremost point of the garbhagriha, precisely the ‘womb-house’ or the temple’s sanctum sanctorum. Indeed, we find it in every artistic creation where an axis is required. For the perfect axial alignment requires or presupposes the realisation of the Zero and the ‘birth that fills the void’.
Yet all these experiences were still examples of a society in preparation for the fullest manifestation of the Dharma. They denote anticipation – precisely of that birth that fills the void. True to the exceptional capacity of Hindu wisemen to perceive these deeper, hidden truths, sometime during this passage the Scriptures inform us that the Buddha was also included in the list of Ten Avatars as an emanation of Vishnu, but that he was sent by the Supreme to ‘mislead’ seekers, more particularly, the asuras. And we also have Sri Aurobindo’s words to the effect that Kalki comes ‘to correct the error of the Buddha’.
What, precisely, was that error? The answer lies in the Mother’s temple – or rather, in the shadow-temple in Auroville, built in her name. What has taken shape there as the Matrimandir is an architectural rendition, attaining the highest heights of symbolic representation, of precisely the error of the Buddha. Thus we refer to it as the Shadow-Temple, inasmuch as it does indeed present the shadow of the supramental Truth: the emptiness of Nothingness.
The Map of the 12 Manifestations, reproduced below, describes the ancient Vedic foundation. It represents the twelve-fold unidirectional, horizontal base of the early civilisation. I discovered the diagram by means of the numerical properties of the name given to me during initiation in 1971, the year when the ‘sorting out’, or ‘decanting’ the Mother set on its way by her yogic power a year earlier began. Thus, when I discovered the significance of Thea and applied it in the formulation of this Map, I was unaware of these Artharvaveda verses which describe this very diagram:
One is the wheel; the bands are twelve;
three are the hubs, – who can understand it?
Three hundred spokes and sixty in addition
have been hammered therein and firmly riveted.
Thus, we note that the Map of the 12 Manifestations is composed of 12 bands, and 3 concentric circles (hubs); with, of course, 360 spokes/degrees ‘hammered therein’, just as the Veda declares. It provides the essential key to the appearances of the Ten Avatars of Hindu tradition.
Had I remained satisfied with the diagram as the be-all and end-all of the realisation, the integral knowledge would have been withheld. This came a year or so later, in 1973, just before the Mother’s passing. It was the discovery, or seeing, of the Gnostic Circle, providing seekers with the same twelve-fold base, onto which, or into which is lodged the vertical direction of the circle of 9, a number equal to the 0 – as the Mathematics of Unity discloses. This is the formidable new key which describes the true new order.
The shadow of a ‘new order’
The Earth is passing through a transitional stage which is perhaps the most precarious passage in the entire history of her long and laborious evolution. While it is a fact that a ‘new world order’ has arrived or been thrust upon us, the true position is that this newness is nowhere in evidence. What we see taking shape is simply a last and more determined attempt to secure complete and everlasting control over the future of humanity by a consciousness which began its accelerated drive for supremacy several centuries ago.
Thus, throughout the world we witness the overt manipulation of certain societies to coerce adherence to this ‘new world order’. It is necessary to analyse the nature of this imposition in these pages, for it concerns our work directly, even as it concerns the destiny of the Indian subcontinent in greater measure than any other area on the globe. The issues involved are those most pertinent to the Vedic Truth and its survival than ever India has known. Throughout the long course of her history India has experienced many tribulations, many attacks on her essence and the continuity of her central leadership in matters of the spirit. But never before has she faced the possibility of total destruction of that essential Truth like today. Being the centre and soul of the very planet, it is fundamental to understand her struggle and weigh the conditions for success or failure. Indeed, it must first be emphasised that none are truly aware of the real struggle, of what actually lies at the heart of the turmoil, or ‘churning’. Given this lack of a clear perception, the Lord of Falsehood has easily clouded the real issues. This is nowhere more clearly discernible than in the struggle to have the Mother’s original adopted for construction of the Matrimandir in Auroville. To this day there is but a handful of people throughout the world who truly perceive the nature of the force that has secured a complete and unrelinquishing hold over the city the Mother founded in 1968, through the channel of what was meant to be its soul – the temple.
Indeed, if the Mother stated that the Matrimandir was to be the soul of Auroville, it is understandable that instruments would come forward to construct that ‘soul’, and that every attempt would be made – conscious on the part of behind-the-scene forces, and often unconscious by their frontline instruments – to assure that this soul would be faithful to the consciousness desiring to take possession of that centre. The Mother was not unaware of the struggle she was setting in motion by centering the endeavour on this temple. Master strategist that she was, she knew the benefits of such a strategy in that identical to the Churning Myth, both positive and negative forces would be gathered in one place as it were, and would thus be obliged to join their energies to accelerate the movement and thereby to hasten the denouement. Indeed, the period set aside by the Time-Spirit for this decisive work was the last three decades of the millennium. That is, we have the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s, drawn into a condensed experience in the final three decades of the millennium, starting from 1971. To be noted is that the beginning of the larger demarcation coincided with the rise of colonialism on the world scene; while the condensed period of three decades was heralded in by the beginning of the temple construction in 1971, precisely because acceleration was the demand from that year onward until the end of the millennium, and the process the Mother organised around the temple drama created that ‘controlled acceleration’.
Thus today, in the drive to impose a ‘new world order’, we witness an intensive effort on the part of the consciousness that worked through the colonial powers to secure its definitive stamp and lasting hold over the Earth’s evolution. And as prophesied in St John’s Revelation or Apocalypse approximately two thousand years ago, the focus of the struggle has indeed been a temple.
As in the early days in India when colonisation began through the East India Company – i.e., economic subjugation – today the concentrated effort of that same consciousness to maintain its hold is equally through economic slavery. The difference between these two periods is only in degree and method of implementation. Then it was force combined with diplomatic coercion and manipulation. Today it is political coercion under the guise of ‘freedom’ – i.e., ‘free’ trade, ‘free’ market, ‘free’ economy, and so forth.
Similar to the perversion in matters of the spirit which we have witnessed in the last three centuries, accentuated in the last three decades, where this question of freedom has been the key tool to pervert, in economics and trade freedom has suffered an identical perversion. That is, in both realms what exists is an illusion of freedom and not the real thing.
Nations throughout the world are being manipulated to subjugate themselves to the presiding economic ‘deity’ by conviction that this adherence implies access to a degree of ‘freedom’ which they have never known. Similarly, they are being convinced that their participation is as equal among equals and hence in keeping with the secular democratic tradition which has gained supremacy over the past hundred years or so, particularly since 1989. But both the freedom and the equality offered are an illusion. Nations which have recently emerged from colonial subjugation are simply diving into the fire from the frying pan, to put it prosaically.
The option that had been offered to these fledgling nations was of course no option at all. Socialism was an instrument of that same consciousness and its entirely predictable offshoot. The colonial era spawned several channels to secure complete domination. Socialism, which a number of newly independent nations opted for, was perhaps the cleverest tool of that retrograde force in that its reliance on a stifling of political, economic and social freedoms for expression and survival, assured its demise at a certain point in the development when precisely the perversion of freedom would become the principal tool of the Lord of Nations. This process culminated in 1989, the start of the very last ennead of this millennium, when the clarion call of freedom brought about the collapse of the socialist paradigm as a visible alternative.
Yet, developing nations throughout the world are in no way ‘free’. And there appears to be no solution to their subjugation inasmuch as none are aware of the level of deception. Nor can they identify the instruments and channels this force uses, much less devise means to secure true freedom from its centuries-old hold. Cultural issues of minor import are focussed on, in an exercise of missing the forest for the trees. In addition, even if this identification were possible, no valid replacement can be envisioned since perversion has been the tool; and this creates the interesting phenomenon of ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’. Thus, while freedom and equality are legitimate primary ingredients of the new world order, perversion of these principles results in a reactionary response which drives one in an opposite direction in the effort to become ‘free’ from the subjugation.
The unipolar world is thus a fallacy in terms of any one of the superpowers occupying that dominant position. For it is neither America, nor of course Russia, nor any other nation which has taken over centre-stage. It is a consciousness working through certain channels which have been prepared for the role they are presently playing some centuries ago. Nor can we say that that consciousness has wholly occupied this position. What we are witnessing is the final struggle of certain forces to secure the dominant position. Indeed, the position is still vacant, but it is rapidly on the way to being filled by the force which functioned so effectively to subjugate half the world during the colonial age.
The outer signs and symbols indicating the victory of that force cannot be ignored. Inasmuch as the denouement was arranged to hinge on a temple as central protagonist in the struggle, mainly to be an aid in identifying the quality of that usurper consciousness and its tactics, foremost is the symbolism of the shadow-temple nearing completion in Auroville. Every item of the construction points to a decisive victory on the physical plane of the force we call the Lord of Nations. Indeed, it is in a sense a conglomerate of nations which serves as a channel for that force to execute its designs on the world scene. This conglomerate also has representatives in the city and its shadow-temple. But the most important item of the symbolism is the transparent, empty crystal, centrepiece of the temple, coupled with the empty stand as its ‘support’. Everywhere in the symbolism we are faced with emptiness – an entirely indispensable ingredient in the ‘new world order’ of the Lord of Nations.
Thus, one of the most important aspects of the new creation is threatened to be rendered obsolete. This is the victory of the soul, both individual and collective. For nations, for India, the problem translates itself into a losing struggle to affirm the national soul and build a new future on the basis of its pulsations and not those emanating from the conglomerate consciousness of the Lord of Nations. Emptiness as a symbol in this essential area of the Mother’s work points to the triumph of the Usurper, of forces from beyond the parameters of the national consciousness. This too has been the fate of the Mother’s city and temple, pertinent especially to India, and through India to the rest of the world.
The problem is the central void. For only by securing this emptiness can the Usurper succeed in imposing its shadow-consciousness on the Earth. India plays a special role in this adventure. But the fact that on her soil, in the body of the Mother, the Usurper has stamped its consciousness on this most important symbol, does not bode well for the nation. Economic policies must evolve from and be an expression of the fulness of the national soul and thus be in harmony with the true needs of the people on all levels and dimensions. They must serve that One, that divine Purpose of the soul, and not take possession of the nation as an imposition from beyond and stemming from impulses and priorities which have no connection with the nation’s central pulsation. Economics cannot inspire a people. They cannot drive the collectivity to express its highest ideals and to attain its loftiest goals. They can only be an outcome of that innermost pulsation and never take its place.
But today it is expected throughout the world that the carrot of economic well-being dangled before nations struggling to affirm their national soul, via a subjugation to the dictates of that conglomerate consciousness, will suffice to silence the stirrings of these indigenous pulsations. In the present scenario what is more than clear is that nothing is in its place. Policies or areas of collective existence which should be an expression of something else have usurped the position that ‘something else’ should occupy. In other words, the law of usurpation triumphs throughout the world. This is possible because of a central emptiness.
Oriental societies constantly bemoan the emptiness in evidence which seems to be undermining the foundations of the old order and which they identify with a western materialist consciousness. But the emptiness I write of is something far more subtle and difficult to detect and hence to remedy. It is a cosmic knot whose existence in turn left that soul-centre void and hence susceptible to the usurpation and the numerous external manifestations of this emptiness. Indeed, if we insist on locating the area on the globe where the perception of central emptiness made its first impact on the human consciousness, it was in the east and not in the west. It was, in fact, in India more than two millennia ago. And today India continues to set the pace and upon her success or failure depends the true ‘new world order’.
What is at stake is not a new world order dominated by a superpower or even a concert of powers. It is a question of the Consciousness which must be stamped on the evolution of the human species and its resultant civilisational expressions. The struggle lies there, in that essential domain. But, important to note is that in this higher destiny of the Earth there is only one plan, as it were, one pattern, one ‘order’ – and not a choice among many possibilities. This order is represented thus:
A centre or point, and a periphery. Like a flower with its circumscribing petals, there are concentric circles evolving from the Point which in turn is identified as ‘the centre that holds’.
In other words, the new order is simply the manifestation of the Cosmic Truth which is spheric in design. Its ‘forms’ are multiple, but unity is its base. Whereas, the new order sought to be imposed is linear insofar as the centre is a void and hence cannot give birth from that Point to a ‘holding power’. Consequently, that ‘new order’ imposing itself is a recipe for continued strife and more explosive expressions of unrest than the world has yet known. The reasons for this are mathematical. We shall discuss them in depth in the remaining portion of this study.
The true harmonious world order is a cosmic expression where each thing is in its place. Thus there can be no usurper, no frustration aroused, resentment or sense of diminishing. Equality is understood and implemented as an expression of that true place of each part of the collectivity. There is no higher or lower. There is equality of the instrument whose complete fulfilment lies in the discovery and occupation of its true place within the whole. If at times this condition has been experienced on Earth, it has been accidental and certainly never conscious. At least during our period of recorded history. The situation may have been different earlier, perhaps during the Vedic Age when the caste system based on the cosmic harmony prevailed in its uncontaminated, undiluted form. But the great divide resides precisely in a conscious or unconscious evolution.
Things cannot be put ‘in their proper place’ without conscious awareness, precisely because the deception, perversion and falsification are extreme and have proven so effective in securing the subjugation described above. To illustrate, there is not one of the surviving older disciples in Sri Aurobindo’s ashram in Pondicherry who has been capable of identifying the presiding consciousness in Auroville as the Usurper. All have fallen at the feet of this consciousness in possession of the project and installed as the ‘deity’ in the shadow-temple.
On numerous occasions these respected disciples have made pilgrimages to the temple, particularly after installation of the empty crystal and stand. They have described the power they felt there as ‘the Mother’, and have not cared to delve deeper into the nature of their experiences because in so doing the painful reality would emerge of a race, a species so thoroughly misaligned that Truth lies beyond its reach and the supramental Gnosis appears to be entirely unattainable. I repeat, it is a painful discovery, particularly after a long life of involvement with Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga. To conclude after 50 or 60 years that one has come no closer to an identification with that Light than in the initial contact with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, or gained the essential discrimination they so assiduously emphasised as a first prerequisite for attainment of a superior consciousness, is indeed a confession few are ready to make.
Yet in the light of knowledge and particularly the supramental Gnosis Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have brought down, the experiences of these older sadhaks, which have been published in various Ashram and Auroville journals, disclose the failure on the part of these respected disciples to fathom certain fundaments of the yoga and especially the nature of the context which perforce had to accompany the victory of the gnostic Light in the world.
This failure merits an in-depth discussion because of its potential for clarifying certain elements of the yoga somewhat difficult to grasp. In addition, this analysis will also serve to illumine the way ahead on this precarious path into the new future which the entire human race is embarked upon and which is meant to be opened precisely by the realisers of the supramental Gnosis. Thus, in discussing the failure to perceive the character of the presiding ‘deity’ in the shadow-temple, the path ahead may become clearer for those who are truly sincere in their aspiration to be instruments for this great change.
A Consciousness of Perversity
A simple means to illustrate the nature of the consciousness that has overtaken the shadow-temple and has thus come to exert a central influence on the affairs of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as centred in that project, concerns the all-important question of a transparent or translucent globe as the focal piece of the temple. Inasmuch as this item is by far the most significant part of the temple, described by the Mother as ‘the symbol of the future realisation’, clearly there should have been the utmost care in executing her will in this key matter to the best of one’s ability. We find, however, that this was not done. And because of its central importance and the subsequent disfigurement that came to stand in place of this supreme symbol, naturally we are driven to conclude that the consciousness presiding over the city’s development is perverse indeed. This is especially so because we have the Mother’s own words to help us determine exactly what that symbol represents, what quality she wished to capture in the symbolism, and finally her definitive instructions that it should not be ‘transparent’: ‘A globe which is not transparent but rather translucent.’ (10.1.1970)
In view of these clear instructions, can there have ever been any confusion about exactly what was required?
To further emphasise the point, the Ashram fell in line completely with the deception by reinforcing the hold of the Usurper through its official publication, Bulletin of the International Centre of Education. In its February l992 edition, it published extracts from the Matrimandir Dialogues where the Mother had explained her vision in detail, clarifying many points which, however, were subsequently disfigured. Regarding the globe the editors reproduced only those early portions of her discussion with the disciple, Satprem, where she speaks of a transparent globe.
For all intents and purposes, her preliminary comments with casual reference to a transparent material, in this official organ of the Ashram would confirm that the selection of a transparent crystal was fully in keeping with the Mother’s vision and wishes.
However, that was her early description of what she ‘saw’, before she drew up a plan with the Ashram engineer a day or two later. Thus, by 10.1.1970 when she met again with the disciple, with those plans in hand, she stated the following when the question of the ‘crystal’ was brought up: ‘And the globe is translucent.’
These more definitive, categorical instructions have been entirely ignored by the communities of both the Ashram and Auroville. There has, moreover, been a concerted, wilful, deliberate attempt to hide the fact from the public that the Mother specifically did not want a transparent globe. In keeping with her ‘seeing’ it had to be translucent.
A sincere aspiration to do the Mother’s will and construct the temple as faithfully as possible to her vision and not the architect’s, would reveal to the careful reader of the Dialogues exactly why she first mentioned transparent and then clarified that it was, on the contrary, translucent. The reason comes across in her own reflections on perhaps the need to put a light under the globe in order to illumine it from below, – that is, to ensure that it becomes full of light, which would be in keeping with her vision. In other words, the Mother in her discussions with the disciple Satprem and the Italian designer, Paolo, sought to explain the chamber and centrepiece as she SAW it. The globe was clearly full of light, effulgent, luminous. To be more precise, it was not empty, much less transparent. It was in her vision an element capable of retaining a luminosity projected upon it, however that was to be devised.
When working on the plan, it is obvious the engineer must have informed the Mother that the effulgence she ‘saw’ could only be attained by a translucent and not transparent globe. With the latter light would pass through and not be contained as in a vessel. Yet this is exactly what now stands as ‘the Mother’s vision’ in the shadow temple: a transparent crystal through which light passes and is not contained, giving the impression of an empty void. And, to further reveal the quality of its presiding ‘deity’, this crystal captures on its surface the images of everything in the chamber and reflects them turned upside-down.
It needs to be stressed again and again that a sincere desire to reproduce the Mother’s vision according to her own description and clear instructions would have encountered no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that a transparent crystal was not in accordance with what the Mother ‘saw’. The Ashram engineer, Udar Pinto, clarified the matter for her. And a diligent study of her dialogues on the subject would have revealed the reason for the two apparently contradictory statements.
But even if this had not been clear, the obvious choice for the centrepiece would perforce have been the last instructions – that is, on 10 January, after she had drawn up the plan herself and worked out those details with the engineer. It must be recalled in this context that the Mother specifically requested an engineer to execute her vision, not an architect. The reasons are obvious in view of the disastrous rendering of that vision by precisely the architects who initially she had foreseen would be incapable of dealing with the matter in the right spirit.
True to the perverse character of the Lord of Falsehood, presiding ‘deity’ of the shadow-temple, her comments on a transparent globe before she herself had understood the difference in terms of the final effect produced, were the only ones clutched tenaciously by the powers-that-be in both communities. Indeed, there is not one disciple in the forefront of a movement not only to restore the purity of her original vision but to rescue the city (and the Ashram) from the hold of that dark conglomerate consciousness of the Lord of Nations.
There are other essential items of her vision which were similarly disfigured when they could have been executed exactly as she saw the chamber. The ‘stand’ is foremost among these items. She specified that Sri Aurobindo’s four upright symbols supporting the globe had to be carved in stone and of a somewhat orange-gold colour. Never did she request metal. Yet the powers-that-be disregarded as well these clear instructions and have placed the empty crystal on a see-through wrought-iron stand. Wherever one looks, however one approaches the symbolism one finds only emptiness, weakness, nothingness in place of the solid fulness of a supramental creation which was the character and quality of the Mother’s original vision, and indeed of the ancient Vedic seeing.
Another important item which was severely disfigured and which is perhaps the most damaging falsification of all concerns the axis of the temple, the horizontal and vertical measurements of the inner cross-section of the chamber – indeed, the most essential measurements to reproduce faithfully in any Vedic creation. In the Mother’s words, this cross-section was to ‘form a perfect circle’ whose periphery would touch certain points of the chamber. To achieve this, before all else the room’s diameter had to be accurate: 24 metres, wall to wall.
As if foreseeing that the falsifying consciousness would target this essential point for its prize achievement, the disfiguring of which would render the temple a faithful reflection of its own misaligned consciousness, the Mother stressed the INNER wall measurement; yet these instructions were deliberately ignored. I write deliberately because I myself implored the powers who secured control over the project before anything was built in Auroville to respect the Mother’s wishes and execute the inner diameter 24 metres wall to wall. She stated, when the disciple wanted to add several metres to the room’s diameter: ‘It is understood that the wall must be at 24 metres’. (17.1.1970) Later he continues to insist and again the Mother stresses: ‘It is understood, the 24 metres end at the walls.’
My efforts in 1974-5 proved futile, as futile as the Mother’s in 1970. The presiding architect is known to have stated that even though it would take ‘only ten minutes’ to re-do the calculations and extend the room’s diameter to the prescribed 24, he had no intention of doing so. The reason for his ignorant obstinacy none have cared to investigate. Any sincere, knowledgeable person must readily conclude that the consciousness guiding the decisions and actions in both the Ashram and Auroville was a shadow of the true thing, a falsifier and not an upholder of Truth.
An example can be found in Appendix 3. This letter was addressed to one of Sri Aurobindo’s oldest remaining sadhaks, one who considers himself an authority on his teachings. It exposes the problem the Mother faced in not having any allies to help execute her vision. We seem to have inherited the problem as the letter reveals, compounded by her departure at the point when this help could have been given. (Unfortunately, we are unable to publish herein the sadhak’s letters, to which this is a reply, because he has withheld permission.)
Today the public is duped because it too stands under the influence of this Shadow. And naturally, given the fact that public funds are involved – a colossal seven crores, or 70 million rupees, – the truth is sought to be concealed. But the day will soon dawn when the truth will conquer because, true to the Mother’s call, there is one person who has seen along with her. The vision thus lives on.
Spinal dislocation
Let us proceed with our discussion of the Gnostic Circle geography and discover how the Mother’s original plan carries a geographical correspondence in the measurements she gave for certain essential items. In particular, we must discuss the axis of the temple mentioned above, inasmuch as it is the principal factor to reproduce faithfully in any Vedic temple. To illustrate, above is a cross-section sketch of a Hindu temple taken from George Michell’s, The Hindu Temple (University of Chicago Press, 1988). This can be of any size, bearing due respect for the correct proportions in any transposition. The important feature, as I have discussed earlier, is the shaft rising from the centremost point in the garbhagriha, the womb-house, or the temple’s sanctum sanctorum.
The Mother has carried this Vedic principle to even higher levels of truth-seeing by rendering the axis in light. She has thus materialised the Vedic symbolism of the Cow as Ray of Light, which is the dual meaning of the Sanskrit word for cow: go, gau. But it is its connection with the geography of India via the geometry of time of this new cosmology that transports the seeing beyond anything that has so far been implemented on Indian soil. For the axis of light is, by the geometry of time, equivalent to one year of 365 days, or 365 years in the equation, one day for one year, which we discover time and again in the Vedas.
I have pointed out in various publications, in particular in The New Way, Volume 2, that the geometry of time in conjunction with the diameter of the temple’s luminous globe provides us with the understanding that the globe is the totality of the subcontinental landmass by means of an application of the Laws of Correspondence or Equivalency. These laws were of utmost importance to the Vedic seers. We find this corroborated by a contemporary French scholar, Charles Malamoud. In an interview he gave to the Unesco Courier (May 1993), he comments on the Vedic emphasis on the question of ‘correspondences between the macrocosm and the microcosm’…
‘…Such correspondences exist, but it is up to humans to discover them, to become aware of them, to formulate them – and in so doing, to confirm them. Solving the Vedic riddles I referred to earlier which are one of the aspects of Brahman, involves linking similar elements from the different levels of existence. There are not just two of these, but more often three: the level of the gods, which is that of the cosmos; the level of the individual human being (body and soul); and between the two of them, the ritual level. A ritual object, a particular moment in a ceremony, is thought to have a replica or counterpart in some specific spatial or temporal element of the universe, and also in some aspect of human activity or an organ of the human body.
‘This network of correspondences is not static. The Vedic authors, particularly in the Upanishads, give much thought to finding new, more refined and complex equivalences. Several Sanskrit words convey this idea, words that mean “connection”, “link”, even “kinship”. In Vedic India the idea of correspondences is more important than the concept of causality – whereas Buddhism insists on the sequence of cause and effect…’
In keeping with this Vedic tradition, the Mother has given us measurements in the centrepiece of the chamber which do indeed contain these ‘new correspondences’ which Malamoud discusses in the above interview. Once again, it is necessary to stress, this newness carries the tradition to even greater depths of perception and understanding of the universal harmonies, provided one is equipped with a key which can clarify the ‘riddle’. This contemporary key of knowledge is the Gnostic Circle.
To illustrate, by the Law of Correspondence, we have 30 degrees of latitude and 40 degrees of longitude captured in the globe of 70cms which the Mother specified as the correct diameter of the globe. This is the spatial equivalence noted by Malamoud, and it is understood that discovering a relationship of this order is not a mental operation. One does not either create such a correspondence or discover it through the mind, but rather on the basis of that special quality of ‘felt vision’ the Mother often refers to, which in the Veda is known as sruti or ‘hearing’ the Truth, combined with ‘seeing’ – for indeed the Rishis are called ‘seers’. That is, a sensorial perception of a superior order.
The temporal relation corresponds to the Festival of Light starting with the December Solstice and culminating on January 5th, tapering off to the 9th. The 5th would be the 15th degree of Capricorn, the ‘mountaintop’. It describes the soul of India.
from: The New Way, Volume 2, pages 350-1
The Gnostic Circle is the key of knowledge to render the measurements of the chamber’s shaft of light and centrepiece applicable through their connection with the calendar via the geometry of time. To illustrate the method, we may take the globe’s 70cms diameter and apply the laws of correspondence through the Gnostic Circle and we find that while its 30 and 40 degrees refer to the 30 and 40 degrees of latitude and longitude respectively, they are also representative of the two segments of the Gnostic Circle’s superimposed circles: the circle of 12 consists of segments of 30 degrees, while the circle of 9 consists of segments of 40 degrees. Further on, we shall observe how these 30 of the space (12) circle and 40 of the time (9) circle correspond accurately to the latitude and longitude in an exercise of applied cosmology.
In addition, when laid as a yardstick around the globe, with its 0 point at Greenwich, the Gnostic Circle reveals that Capricorn starts just where the Capricorn hieroglyphic Indian landmass begins. From there the sign’s 30 degrees move into and through India, with the 15th degree of the sign as indicated in the maps shown previously, – i.e., at 76˚longitude east. With the zodiac thus laid on the globe, Capricorn begins at 60/61 East and continues eastward to the mouth of the Ganga in the Bay of Bengal; and then the Capricorn tail is carried over to encompass Burma, and from there swings back toward the central body. This hieroglyphic symbol represents a play of energy, and cannot be understood unless this is taken into account. The gunas, or energy qualities, move into the Body in this eastward triadic play. The tail, reversing at the Capricorn 0 point in Bengal and thereafter sweeping back into the central Body of the Mother, indicates an essential feature of the destiny of Bharat, not to be found in any other nation in the world: a contained triune play of energies to produce a centre that holds. This would be the Earth’s zero point, her centre, her soul.
In The Magical Carousel this attribute of Capricorn is detailed in the tenth chapter particularly via the sign’s connection to Time, and above all, simultaneous time – or the three times of an immobile centre or seed: compressed time in the core. The effulgent translucent globe of the Mother’s original vision captures the supreme essence of Capricorn in both time and space through the new cosmology’s geometry of time and cosmo-geography of space.
The spine of the Body or its Mt Meru axis is found at 15 degrees into its Capricorn form, thus at 76˚longitude. It moves vertically through the entire portion of the subcontinent, covering the prescribed 30˚of latitude from top to bottom, as indicated on page 24. The student who wishes a more detailed presentation of this configuration may consult Volume 2 of The New Way, Chapter 9. I am restating a portion of that analysis here simply to highlight the importance of executing that central axis in the Mother’s temple with extreme care inasmuch as it has this geographical correspondence with the actual Indian landmass of the Capricorn hieroglyph through the laws of correspondence and equivalence.
Indeed, having failed to execute the axis properly in the shadow-temple, it stands that in some way there has to be a reflection in the geography the axis-globe comprises – i.e., the Indian landmass. One important though tragic correspondence seems to be the recent earthquake that struck India on 30 September 1993. The area affected straddled principally parts of the state of Maharashtra, and then into Karnataka. Its intensity was such that it was felt even at Skambha.
To date seismologists are baffled by this earthquake. In their words, there is ‘no scientific explanation’ for its occurrence in that area. The epicentre was around Latur and Osmanabad in Maharashtra, a location not significant in seismological assessments of quake-prone zones on the subcontinent; in fact it is rated in the category of least probability.
I had pointed out when the ‘crystal’ was installed in the shadow-temple that due to its misalignment and emptiness, there would be repercussions in all that the globe and pedestal stand for. Particularly its geographical correspondences. One such was this very epicentre: the quake struck not on any geological fault line but rather right on the disjointed spinal column running through the body of a dismembered Mother India in terms of the Capricorn hieroglyphic relationships; and at a critical location on that column, – that is, 18 degrees down the column and 12 degrees from the tip of the ‘V’ at the bottom of the map. Both these numbers hold the key to the time-space relationships in the Mother’s chamber. 18 is the key to the vertical descending solar ray and its correspondence to certain time cycles, equivalent to longitude which is measured vertically across the globe; 12 is the horizontal base of the Mother’s 12-petalled symbol, equivalent to latitude bands, measured horizontally.
The ‘spine’ extends from what I have called the Eye of Shiva (in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir), to the tip of the subcontinent. This axis passes right through the epicentre of the recent inexplicable earthquake (the area is indicated by a circle in the map shown previously). The correspondence with the shadow-temple lies in the same axial dislocation producing a derangement of both time and space. This is the ‘fault line’ susceptible to disturbances in a landmass that is hypersensitised to these geo-cosmological rumblings.
It is to be expected that disbelievers will attribute this clear correspondence to ‘coincidence’. But the sages and seers know. The unfortunate part is that their voices are neither heard nor heeded. For the Mother herself lamented, after her efforts to have her plan implemented in the temple construction failed, that ‘…One is not going to say it! To begin with, they will not believe me.’ (17.1.1970) A year later she questioned, ‘Will it have to be the lesson of catastrophe?’
The perversity of ‘goodwill’
Listening to the taped recordings of the Mother’s discussion on the Matrimandir with the disciple, Satprem, is a profoundly disheartening experience, for it reveals the inability of the human being to follow the Mother in her seeing and to offer the least resistances possible to the fulfilment of her will. Indeed, what is evident as we listen is that from the beginning there was no desire at all on the part of any of the dramatis personae to serve as channels for the implementation of her vision. From the outset the disciple, for one, reveals that his sole interest is to secure the Mother’s approval for his protege’s vision in place of hers. This is quite apparent if one listens to the entire sequence of the recordings – those made public, that is – from 31.12.1969 to 17.1.1970.
I would like to close this portion of our study with a brief summary and analysis of the contents of those recordings for readers who do not have the tapes, and also as a guide for those who do. (The complete transcripts are included in TVNs 1/5 and 1/6.)
31.12.1969: In this conversation the Mother makes it clear that she has not seen the temple as yet. She has an idea based on a preliminary ‘seeing’, this is clear, since she describes the chamber in this session with the disciple very close to what she did come to see, perhaps within hours of their meeting. Rather than provide us with the details we seek to reconstruct her vision accurately, this discussion centres mostly on the problems with the official architect in charge of the entire project and his reluctance to start with the centre of the township, the temple. His preference, according to the Mother, is to build the city first and then the centre.
But the most important feature of this session is the disciple’s presentation of his protege’s ideas. He tells the Mother about Paolo Tommasi’s ‘inspiration’ as to what needs to be done and reads out PT’s letter to her. The gist is that the centre should be built first and only after that the city. In addition, he emphasises that this ‘unification’ around the centre’ will help to bring down the vision.
The extremely interesting part to note is his repeated reference to an axis, a centre, which he feels should serve to gather the dispersed energies in Auroville for the positive completion of that task at hand. Given the role that these two played subsequently, precisely in the destruction of that (occult) axis and centre the Mother so meticulously arranged for her temple, this recording takes on historical importance and is a document of immense value, for it casts light on the difficulty a ‘sincere goodwill’ poses when not accompanied by a sincere yoga.
The important part to focus on in this tape is the insistence on PT’s vision and ideas because subsequent developments will reveal that throughout the entire exercise, spanning 18 days, he clings tenaciously to his part in the affair, his instrumentation, even after the Mother had informed them all that she had SEEN, that she no longer needed them for the purpose.
But even as early as this discussion the objective listener can easily appreciate that the Mother intuited the essential lines of the chamber and was only waiting for that decisive experience to come which would both confirm her intuition as well as provide the missing and essential details of the chamber. Indeed, immediately after this first session with Satprem, she did receive that confirmation. This came through the ‘felt vision’, or the actual discovery on the subtle plane of that chamber. She entered the temple in the subtle physical, saw, and thereafter recorded what she saw. At that point, she did not need anyone to help ‘bring down the vision’, and she stated this quite emphatically though fruitlessly.
3.1.1970: The disciple informs the Mother that PT waits outside her room to see her. The Mother begins enthusiastically to tell Satprem, before seeing PT, of her experience, that she has now SEEN. She tells the disciple in minute detail what she ‘saw’, ‘lived’. He suggests that she should tell PT rather than him, but the Mother prefers to talk to Satprem about it, until she has the plans drawn up.
After describing the experience of seeing in full, she declares: ‘I have had the vision of that room, so I do not need anyone to see what that should be: I KNOW. And an engineer is needed rather than an architect, because an architect…It has to be as simple as possible.’
The disciple then relates that he transmitted everything the Mother had told him (31.12.1969) about the ‘large empty room’ and how touched PT was by this idea, that it coincided with his – this emptiness. The Mother makes it clear that she would rather have the plans in hand before seeing PT, but agrees to see him nonetheless since he is waiting.
When PT enters she again describes her vision but begins by stating straight-away that… ‘I have seen the interior’, and that in a few days she will have the plans and drawings because…‘the exterior, I do not know at all, but the inside I KNOW’.
Then begins another long, detailed description of every aspect of her vision, remarking from time to time that she will soon have the plans. PT appears to listen intently. She ends by stating again. ‘…So, as soon as my papers (plans) are ready, I will call you to show you.’
After PT leaves the room the Mother again broaches the subject of the harmony (or disharmony) between the competing architects, Roger Anger and PT, and how she would prefer to have PT present to handle building the centre [after all, he seemed so enthusiastic] while RA is absent, and when he returns and works on the township PT should be absent, and so on. But again she stresses her preference for an engineer, ‘…It is for this reason that I am going to have these sketches to show him (PT), done by an engineer, because it is not an architect’s job, it is a job for an engineer…very precise…very precise.’ And then regarding the importance of the right calculations, she states, ‘That is what is important, the Sun’s play on the centre (the globe). Because that becomes the symbol – the symbol of the future realisation.’
To note in this portion is the repeated insistence that she wants an engineer not an architect, and that she will soon have the plans to show. In other words, she comes across in this tape as fully sure of her vision and her ability to get precise plans done by the engineer. At which point, with plans in hand, they can proceed to execute them. Time and again, to both Satprem and PT, she declares: I HAVE SEEN, I do not need anyone.
10.1.1970: Satprem begins by telling the Mother he has a letter for her from PT. The Mother interjects, saying she plans to meet PT in the afternoon. Then she informs the disciple that she has the plans of the chamber. She has him unroll them and begins a long explanation of each and every detail. It is clear that everything has been meticulously worked out by her with the engineer.
Referring continuously to the plans, she discusses the centre of the room, her horizontal symbol, Sri Aurobindo’s four symbols forming a square upholding a translucent globe (‘…as yet we do not know what material’).
Then the Mother, discusses the entry as a descent under the walls and into the room from below, with these memorable words, ‘…It is another symbol. Everything is symbolic.’
She explains that Sri Aurobindo’s symbols are to be carved in stone of an orange-gold colour, the only colour in the room, and again ‘…A globe that is not transparent but translucent’.
When she finishes, Satprem reads PT’s letter. It is necessary to reproduce his letter in full because more than anything else in this sordid display of ignorance and self-importance, this letter reveals the precise nature of the difficulties the Mother faced in having her vision executed. To appreciate in full the nature of the intransigent obstinacy, it must be recalled that just a week earlier PT met the Mother and she told him she had seen, she would give him the plans, she now did not need anyone, and she did not want an architect, only an engineer. Nevertheless, he wrote,
‘Very sweet Mother,
‘I saw R [the official architect] Sunday, he came to my room, we had lunch together. With love, I arranged for you and R some very beautiful flowers. You, you were with us. We spoke a lot. I felt R like a brother.
‘I told him that Auroville cannot be born like any other city (urban problems, social, economic, all that: later). The beginning must be ‘something else’. For that reason we should start with the Centre. This Centre must be our lever, our fixed point, the thing on which we can steady ourselves to leap to the other side – because it is only from the other side that one can begin to understand what Auroville should be. And this Centre should be the form which manifests in matter the content which You can transmit to us on all the planes (even the occult). We, we should be simply the open and sincere mediums through whom you can make that concrete.
‘And I told him how I felt the need to approach all that by living the experience internally, all united – people from the orient and the occident – in a vast movement of love, because it is the only cement possible to build ‘something else’.
‘And the Centre can give us that love immediately because it is love for You!
‘I told him that, practically, we can begin by a moment of silence, all gathered together, and try to make a total blank, and on that blank, with the aspiration of everyone, make the signs for the beginning descent. But all united and all together, especially those who are spiritually more advanced, the Indians.
‘R was in full agreement. He said really we must do that.’
The Mother’s immediate response to his letter was revealing: ‘I am seeing P this afternoon and I will give him the plans. Because this is what I have seen.’ Then she does not dwell on his desire to unite and call down the ‘signs’ of what should be, she returns again to the details: white marble, where to get it, Sri Aurobindo’s symbols…and the translucent globe.
Most important, she specifies the correct diameter of the globe: 70cms, asking the disciple to confirm this in the plans. He does. Then the entry by descent and ascent into the room is emphasized and the fact that to gain access to the chamber certain conditions would have to be met (‘…It must be somewhat initiatic.’)
17.1.1970: The disciple begins by presenting the ideas of PT and her Italian secretary, Nata, regarding the outer shape of the building. The Mother comments that she is open to suggestions since she only saw the inside. (The implication being that the interior is her creation, her domain, not the architects’.)
But from this discussion on the outer form the talk spins off to every item of her plan, until by the end of a long and gruelling attempt to defend the elements of her vision which had been systematically attacked, we realise that the Mother was in the presence of obstinate ignorance in the guise of ‘love’ and ‘goodwill’.
For example, the twelve columns are attacked as being ‘another symbol of the old creation’ (PT’s words). If it was necessary to have them for a ‘symbolic’ representation (after all the Mother had said, everything was symbolic), then one could put 12 blocks, or backrests about 50cms high. To this nonsense the Mother replies, ‘That has no meaning.’ A symbolic meaning?, the disciple questions ‘…because you spoke of the pillars as backrests.’ She insists she saw pillars. He insists that something could be put in their place as ‘symbols’. She keeps on insisting. He retorts. And on and on it goes.
The recording of much of this was not kept, only the transcripts which appear in The Mother’s Agenda, Volume 11 (1970). Reading these transcripts, it is pathetic to discover that even with the precise plans in hand, her disciples and devotees saw fit to dismantle her vision bit by bit. Nothing was sacred.
Midway through this gruelling exercise, Satprem even makes this astounding remark about PT’s ‘plan’ of the room which he brought to the Mother: ‘But when Paolo showed me his plan, I had the impression of something very beautiful …I will tell you what I felt. I felt: I am assisting at the birth of Auroville.’
The Mother wastes no time. She replies: ‘It is not true.’
Satprem insists: ‘The material birth, I mean.’
Again the Mother is emphatic: ‘Yes, yes, I understand well, but it is not true.’ After this, according to the transcripts, she enters into a long concentration.
The recording commences again, after these pages and pages of the Mother’s futile attempts to protect her SEEING, when finally she states:
‘You know, I do not believe in external decisions. Quite simply, I believe in only one thing: the force of Consciousness which makes a Pressure…And the Pressure goes on augmenting.’
She then explains that she cannot move about to oversee things as she used to, – in other words, to make sure things get done as she wants. Therefore she relies on the ‘pressure of the Consciousness’, … ‘All the rest, those are things men do; they do them more or less well, and then it lives, and then it dies, and then it changes and then it is deformed, and then – that is what they do…’.
Finally the discussion concludes with these words, ‘So, since there are not many who can understand, I say nothing: I watch and I wait. I LOOK…Someone gives me a paper like you have just done when you gave me that drawing [PT’s plan of the temple], I look, like that, and I see very well what in that paper comes from above, and what is a mixture and what is… Like that. But one cannot say it! – to begin, they would not believe me.’
After a moment of silence, the Mother interestingly begins discussing the terminology Sri Aurobindo used to describe the new species he envisioned, which would replace ‘the old man’. She comments that she understands why he called it ‘supramental’ and not superman. In other words, she realised she was faced with precisely that aberration: the exaltation of ‘man’, the ego of the instrument, and the deranged mental approach which has brought so much calamity to the world.
What becomes evident at the end of this disturbing exercise is that at no point along the way did the Mother enjoy the collaboration of instruments ready to execute HER vision. The transcripts and recordings reveal an obsession with their own ideas, to the point that we are justified in asking whether they even heard the Mother.
In this context, it may be of interest to report that in late 1974 or early 1975, when the first wave of opposition to the architects arose before construction of the room had reached the point of no return, I invited PT to describe his experience with the Mother to me. Since the points in question were salvation of a few important items, particularly the 24-metre inner wall room diameter, entry from below, and the twelve columns, I wanted to solicit his help and to know what it was like to have heard the Mother describe her vision immediately after it had occurred. He explained how ‘charged’ her room was, how extraordinary the experience was to listen to her.
Naturally I then asked how it was that he came back to her with all the above changes (‘…columns are another symbol of the old creation’) when her description to him had been so remarkable, so powerful. He had no reply.
The conclusion must be that these were representative instruments sent to implement a vision, but certainly not the Mother’s; that their obstinacy was total and that the Mother, given her age (92) and frailty and inability to oversee the construction herself, could not pretend to emerge victorious from this 18-day Kurukshetra battle, which closed on that most significant date, 17 January. Thus she concluded with these words ‘…But one is not going to say it. To begin, they would not believe me.’
What now stands in Auroville is not merely a ‘mixture’. It is the representation of what the Mother did not care to elaborate upon then: the contours in every detail of the Titan’s Consciousness, the shadow of the Gnostic Light, the perversion of Sri Aurobindo’s truth and the objective of his mission. Lamentably, what was recorded during those fateful 18 days was the description of the binary creation with all its flaws and ‘goodwill’. Indeed, the Mother’s ‘helpers’ displayed one of the principal characteristics of the Titanic Consciousness: self-important ego of the instrument. None heard her because they were too full of themselves.
Another reason for this scrutiny of the Titanic response to the Light is that it forms an introduction to the next part of this study in which we shall analyse the limitations of the Supramental Shakti in dealing with human aberrations, even when it means the destruction of her own creation. We shall delve into this question of ‘pressure’ which the Mother refers to, in her view the only means to get the right thing done. What, then, is the nature of that special power she referred to? Has it been in evidence?
It is clear that given her age and physical condition, the Mother could not deal with her entourage as she might have done in her younger days. She relied heavily on that ‘consciousness exerting a pressure’. But in this case it would appear as if nothing had been accomplished, inasmuch as the shadow-temple has come up and appears to be an everlasting ‘symbol’ of the old creation, in the Mother’s own name. In other words, a travesty of her truth. But the Divine Strategy has been revealed in the course of the years following the Mother’s passing, though its confirmation has often been through negative and disturbing happenings. At this point there is one thing that stands beyond all doubt. Seekers are given a choice: this or that. It is an important feature of the divine Strategy in that the next stage for humanity is characterised by a conscious choice. For this there must be a clear understanding of what our options are. We cannot be expected to choose between this and that unless we know the contours of both the Titanic and the Vedic Consciousness. Hence, this exercise, unpleasant as it may be for seekers, especially those who consider that ‘spirituality’ be tainted by ‘controversy’ (and there are many in this old mindset), has been a necessary and all-important part of our study. From here, having dissected the Shadow in all thoroughness, we shall move on to the Light, to a discussion of the means at the Mother’s disposal to bring about the establishment of her Truth in the world. For this to happen the sincere seeker must be armed with a fine discrimination so that the shadow is not mistaken for that Light.
