Theme - 11
Planet Earth, in the Age of Aquarius
Part One
September 1974: Thea is winding up Section Three of her book, The Gnostic Circle (image right) and she opens Ch 18 with this statement, ‘The Earth is in a depressed condition at present… it is an infected organ…’ She uses the analogy of the Earth as a tumorous cancer to help the student understand not only the seriousness of the Earth’s condition but also, the cause: ‘…a group of cells breaks away from the central rule to set up its own autonomous one. They carry the body toward disintegration and death because they have lost all contact with the centering light’. (The Gnostic Circle, 4th ed, 2019, p. 304).
Without this ‘centering light’ the Earth does not know that she has a means to renew herself; with the ‘loss of the consciousness of immortality’, Thea writes, ‘Death has become the Sovereign Lord’.
Even worse, humanity has adjusted itself to this state; ‘theories of reality’ or ‘falsehoods’ were constructed to further convince ‘the patient’ of the need to abandon the planet and its cancer; ‘to look elsewhere for a Redeemer to save it’. Thea sums it up with this chilling statement:
‘Death then became the reality of life, the only certainty in this uncertain existence, the Dark King reigned and Earth became his Underworld, whereupon he imprisoned the Soul-Spark Daughter of the Divine Mother…
‘…unable any longer to perceive the oneness of itself with Perfection, it (the Earth) passed into a torpid, chilling sleep, the unconscious slumber and the loss of the light and knowledge of the truth of things.
‘And so it glorified Death and erected numerous schools of thought around a mere Phantom.’ (ibid)
It is time for the ‘ignorance’ to be exposed, for our Earth to see the ‘phantoms’ of suffering and illness for what they are. And it is time, Thea continues, to expose the illusion of Death which has been like a tumour eating away at the planet. It is time for each person to awaken and realise his/her soul, and ‘return to the rule of the Central Being’. This is the only cure for the ‘cancer’ that afflicts our Earth (ibid, 308).
Part Two
‘Earth Rise’ – a Vision of Oneness
At the same time as our Earth seems to succumb to her ‘sickly state’, she is being pushed, by the endless cycles of time toward recovery and growth. Thea cites an event that evoked a world-wide response: seeing our planet as one whole earth, from the photograph taken on the Moon, on 20 July 1969, filled the planet and its people with awe (image left).
A vision of unity rose up from the depth of humankind and made them dissatisfied with their isolation, ignorance and sickly condition. However long it takes before this yearning is actualized, we do not know, Thea writes: but it is inevitable that there will be no peace until that vision of ‘One Earth’ becomes realised on this planet. (Thea, The New Way, The Rise and Establishment of a Gnostic Society, Volume 1, p. 6)
There are other events that have become ‘symbols’ of the Earth’s evolving destiny, there have been tremendous breakthroughs in Science. But without an inner penetrating light into the reason why our Earth was created, and its unique purpose among the nine in our Solar System, Science may lead us into ‘a black hole’ of destruction. And Science is not assisted by Spirituality; on the contrary we find around the globe examples of divisiveness and chaos, caused by monotheistic ideologies.
So where does humanity turn?
Thea introduces the concept of The Gnostic Society, a time on Earth when ‘higher laws were known to determine the ways of the planet’s societies’. The idea of such a time or group is not new, occult traditions speak of past evolutionary cycles known as ‘a Golden Age’ or ‘the Satya Yuga’. Such groups of enlightened people today would be most likely rejected, states Thea (ibid, p. 18).
For as long as our earth is ‘sickly’ and asleep, ignorant of her inner soul potentialities and unable to cooperate with Mother Nature, the evolution of consciousness does not occur by a natural process of undoing or ‘dissolution’. Rather she must ruthlessly make use of the process of ‘destruction’. She makes use of ‘large scale wars’ and/or other acts of violence to advance her evolutionary goals because during these spans of time, humanity awakens from its sleep and nature makes use of those energies for a certain progress and expansion.
Mother Nature has other tools of destruction that work in a more subtle way, she attacks the well springs of collective life to bring about ‘a quicker death of the old earth’ (ibid, p. 24). Drugs, passive absorption in entertainment (movies and TV), uncontrolled indulgence and massive greed – all contribute by exerting a pressure to hasten the collapse of the old. Because, as Thea writes, a new manifestation, ‘the cell of a new Earth’ cannot be built on the old creation:
The reality of a higher light is manifesting on Earth – a creation that exists in the subtle plane of Truth, that is already, and that only asks to be allowed to take shape in this world of ours…
‘There is no pressure exerted from outside… Shakti’s method today is to allow for the very light at the root of the deepest darkness to awaken and come forth, and from within it must influence and finally cause the collapse of the outer veils that hide the seed of light…
All is the Divine (action) … to give shape to the Ideal in the material world that will be the cell of a new Earth.’ (ibid, p. 30 – 31).
As of 1956, when the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry announced, ‘the time has come,’ the Supramental force became an active part of Earth evolution. Thea writes this event radically altered every structure of the old earth, causing a self-generated process of caving in of the old powers. As this Supramental ‘seed of truth’ grows, that seed itself generates a force or a power (‘a tiny seed-flame’) which is able to pierce down to the farthest layers of darkness and ignorance , the ‘inconscient’, and start our earth on ‘the great rise upward’. (ibid, p. 33).
During this time of transition to a new creation, the Earth makes use of all these discarded energies; she casts both the dark and the light into a large cauldron where a mighty brewing process takes place. Thea emphasizes that the power working is not ‘occult‘, it is a force unknown on Earth before this time, a Supramental force
‘which is a combined action of a rise from below, out of the hidden depths of the matter of each created thing, and a descent from the supreme heights of the Spirit. It is an irresistible power because it is the truth-core of all that is…’ (ibid p. 38).
The secret key to this renewal is a ‘precise control’, governed by the power of Time. In the very depth of the Earth herself is hidden the original seed, the Divine Transcendent. Through the evolutionary cycles of Time, The Transcendent One takes form, and keeps manifesting in an unending display of forms in Nature. As Thea describes it, the whole of our Earth’s manifestation is Prakriti’s (Nature) offering of love to her Lord (Purusha).
Evolution on this Earth is for the purpose of refining the species, continuously creating a more and more perfect form for the indwelling seed. The many forms of creation are the extension of that ‘original seed’; each is equal to it in every way, from the most etherial to the most material, all are one, the Brahman (Ibid p. 47). Our mental human race is the highest evolutionary form so far.
But it is a fact: our human body as it is now, will not be adequate to house this new seed; a great pressure will be exerted to transform the physical body for the growth of that ‘original seed’. It is only natural that now, in this present limited condition, we accept the condition of mortality, that our human journey ends at death. But when humanity is able to widen and deepen and heighten their consciousness, when they can begin to live in a consciousness of the One and the Many – to live their simultaneity – they will be approaching the condition of immortal being, not only spiritual but physical as well.
Part Three
The Magical Carousel, ’a new myth for a new age’
Witnessing the destruction of the old earth during this time of radical transformation can be painful to those who do not understand that the degeneration of the old way and the rise of the new Supramental seed is being guided by an absolute precision and control. For the student new to the study of cosmic harmonies, Thea explains the evolutionary journey, in story form , likening the progressive movements of Earth to a spinning Magical Carousel. (The Magical Carousel & Commentaries, 2nd ed. 2018)
In 1970, while Thea was living in Rome and charting horoscopes for people who worked in cinema, she became aware there was far more to the traditional meaning of astrology than simply a tool for prediction. She saw the zodiac as a living being; each sign was inter-related and connected, forming a cosmic script that had been in the heavens since the beginning of time; they told the story of the evolution of consciousness of our Earth.
Based on this seeing, she wrote The Magical Carousel; it was the gift she gave to the Mother when she found herself at the Mother’s feet upon her arrival in Pondicherry on 29 September, 1971. Nine years later, while living in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, she added Part Two, Commentaries and she tells the reader that it was after she had met the Mother she began to realise the prophetic nature of all she had written in 1970, prior to coming to Pondicherry. ‘It is my story, autobiographical’ she said, ‘and also the story of opening the new path for all souls’.
The Magical Carousel is called a children’s story, but it may be more accurate to say that Thea uses a story-form to tell a perennial tale, to describe ’a new myth for a new age’. In her words:
‘It is the contemporary myth of the Supramental Manifestation… it is not based on older myths as (Sri Aurobindo’s ) Savitri was; it arises in the new creation and voices the Soul’s aspiration and light where it stands today; it answers those questions or conditions which we encounter today.’
Val and Pom-pom initially embark to Saturn, but their rocket is detoured to the Sun instead. Upon arrival they find a set of 12 keys to open each door of Zodiacland, and are given one directive, ‘Follow the Sun’. And so it is the four stages of Cosmic TIME that are the real protagonist of the myth. It is these four ‘faces’ of Earth which she shows to the Sun as she journeys annually round ‘her Lord’. Thea calls these phases, Cosmic Dawn, Cosmic Midnight, Cosmic Sunset and Cosmic Midday.
The people they meet, as well as the obstacles that try to delay or halt their movements toward the Sun, all describe the process of discovering one’s soul and securing the victory over death.
Chapter 11, titled Aquariusland, describes our present stage of evolution: based on the precession of the Equinoxes, our Earth, entered the Age of Aquarius in 1926. Using the three energy modes, or Gunas of Indian tradition, Rajas (creation), Sattwa (preservation) and Tamas (dissolution), Aquarius falls into the middle energy mode of Preservation (Sattwa) – a ‘sphere of higher consciousness towering far above the ordinary level of human awareness’. In traditional astrology, Aquarius, is known as the sign of brotherhood, of universality.
Val and Pom-pom, are precious children, they have already travelled through all the obstacles of the first stages of their journey and were fully ‘initiated’ in Capricorn, the tenth sign/stage. They are the forerunners of the new way’, people who have access to a new consciousness, a ‘future light that awaits the world’ as the new race begins to rise (ibid,p.254). Now, in the last stages of their travels, they are swept up and suspended within a furious whipping tornado (image right).
They look around with wonder: ‘it looks as though the ferocious tornado has destroyed the entire land it passed through. From where has the force arisen, and where is it taking them?’
Although Val and Pom-pom are saddened as they hear the wailing sounds of humanity all around them, they realise that the collapse of the old consciousness is inevitable, they can’t help this dying civilization caught up in its own darkness of the past. They cannot change the destiny of this Earth.
The Jug symbolizes the Earth-womb; all the wornout, discarded energies of the past are thrown into this vessel, where a big cosmic brewing takes place. This stew is allowed to settle and then the sediment is used in forming the new creation. Thea explains that our ‘cosmic manifestation is a perpetual re-allocation of energies. (ibid, p. 255).
Summary
The Destiny of Earth – in the Age of Aquarius
Aquarius is traditionally known as the ’sign of the friend, of brotherhood’; it is expected that Earth and her inhabitants are to undergo a ‘universal transformation’ during this Aquarian Age in which we now live. For Thea this means that our planet, perhaps for the very first time in recorded history, would be seen as a ‘conscious entity’ among the nine; Earth’s unique and full contribution to the planetary society would be unveiled (Thea, The New Way 1, op cit, p. 88).
In the past, our Earth was treated as ’an outcast’ in the planetary system, Thea explains; this was a result of partial and ineffective spiritual visions over thousands of years. The destiny of our Earth has been totally misunderstood (Thea, The Emerging Cosmos, The Vishaal Newsletter, May 1987). In both East and West, seekers were encouraged to deny life on their own home planet: Western spirituality encouraged believers to accept suffering as a way to attain a reward in a heaven beyond this life. Earth was considered a prison, a ‘fall from grace’.
Similarly, Thea adds, a variety of Eastern philosophical systems also negated life on this planet: ‘…in a quest for otherworldliness,…all creation in matter was an “illusion”, a deceptive veil that seekers of Truth must tear through in order to reach the immutable, immobile, transcosmic and static Brahman…’ (ibid).
This denial of our planet’s own truth of being and purpose as the home of an evolving species, resulted in a pattern that has conditioned our whole way of life, both individually and collectively. Sri Aurobindo’s stirring words in the last pages of his opus, The Life Divine (Chapter XXIII) opens Thea’s essay, which describes our ‘Human Condition’:
‘At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny…
She asks the reader to clearly assess the prevailing conditions of our Earth: the only conclusion we can come to is that this ‘crisis’ is the outcome of past spiritual and religious theories. None could offer a more enlightened understanding of the evolutionary process (ibid). It is self evident that our present stage of evolution is a step along the way and we are a species in transition from the mental to the Supramental. Humankind is in the process of evolving an instrument that will be able to
‘sustain the greater cosmic forces…on this planet, without experiencing destructive collapse of energies or succumbing to the old ways of escape through outdated solutions and methods this world has known until now’. (ibid)
As Val and Pom-pom whirled through the Aquarian tornado, they knew that nothing could stop the wailing cries all round them of a helpless dying humanity (part three); Shiva’s cosmic dance had already set the destruction in motion. Their task was to return to Earth and take up the revolutionary work of this Aquarian Age: to root the Truth-Consciousness of the Supramental into our Earth.
Our Solar System itself is leading the way, having extended its boundaries by a triad (Uranus, 1781, Neptune 1846 and Pluto, 1930) – a critical threshold has been reached. We must go beyond our present human structure which cannot sustain the great influx of energies which is being forced upon us with the descent of the Supramental into our Earth.
Specifically, this all points toward the need to accept the new paradigm at the heart of the unfolding Indocentric cosmology: India is the cosmological centre of the Earth, her dharma is eternal. The line of evolutionary avatars is the ’inbuilt mechanism’ that allows the nation to continuously update her Vedic truth and guide the nations of the world toward true internationalism.
Building on the ‘blueprint’ given by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Thea’s ‘applied cosmology’ shows how this majestic goal for our Earth and her people will unfold. Earth is limited now by the darkness and confusion of ‘Diti’, but the ‘realm of Aditi – the ‘Mother of Unity’ – beckons to us. (Thea, Contours of the Binary Creation, 2015).
Thea explains that in the planetary society there is no hierarchical system; nothing superior or inferior, nothing need be discarded (i.e. destroyed). Rather, all find their rightful place in the harmonious circle of One. But we must be mindful of Aditi’s full circle, all 12 stages. In Thea’s image (right) she posits the first six stages through the Physical and Vital quarters of the circle as ‘the lower hemisphere’, whose regent is Diti.
We must acknowledge there are another six stages, two more quarters, which Thea designates as the ‘higher hemisphere’ made up of the Mental and Supramental quarters, ruled by Aditi (ibid). To know the fullness of Aditi, which is the goal of our Aquarian journey, is to move consciously inward, away from the ego which now functions as the pivot of our daily existence, and unveil ‘a true unitary centre’ – a ‘soul’.
Note in Thea’s image that Capricorn opens the final quarter of the higher hemisphere. Before entering Aquariusland, Val and Pom-pom, of The Magical Carousel story, had gone through a special realization in this tenth sign/stage of their journey; it is here they entered the ‘chamber of self-discovery and soul realisation’ – they found their ‘dharma’. It is here that our society must also journey so that it can enter Aquarius with boundaries extended.
Each person must be ready to move beyond the individual toward a cosmic consciousness – a universality that is demanded of us in the Aquarian Age, so that the descent of the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, may take place. Thea cautions to watch out for two adversaries which go hand in hand: Inertia and Incompletion. We become distracted by the binary concerns of life; then death comes and cuts short the journey – our mental species cannot reach the Solar World (ibid).
The Aquarian task is to open the ‘field’ wider and embrace the full four quarters/ worlds of the circle (diagram above). Like the Aryan warriors, it is a cosmological process we are living through (see Theme Twelve); we must realise what a tremendous privilege it is to take birth on Earth at this time with all four stages of the 9th Avataric descent now completed. (Also see Thea, Fission and Fusion, The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 4, no. 2, June 1989).
Thea explains it will be an enlightened collectivity that makes that contact with their centre (image left) and allows the ‘soul’ to unveil itself. It will be a Gnostic Society who sees clearly the destiny of our planet in our system of nine; they will assist our Earth to manifest her own inherent Light and Harmony. Their purpose for incarnating on Earth will be to offer themselves as a ‘channel for the rise and establishment of a new and gnostic way of being’ (Thea, The New Way 1 & 2, op cit, chapter 7 ).
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References: Planet Earth, in the Age of Aquarius
About Skambha
Aeon Centre of Cosmology (ACC), (situated on the land known as Skambha,) was established in 1986 near Perumalmalai in the Palani Hills of Tamil Nadu, South India, by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea). The Centre ‒ 18 km below the tourist area of Kodaikanal ‒ stretches across acres
Val and Pom-pom, are precocious children, they have already travelled through all the obstacles of the first stages of their journey and were fully ‘initiated’ in Capricorn, the tenth sign/stage. They are the forerunners of ‘the new way’, people who have access to a new consciousness, a ‘future light that awaits the world’ as the new race begins to rise (ibid, p. 254). Now, in the last stages of their travels, they are swept up and suspended within a furious whipping tornado (image left). They look around with wonder: ‘it looks as though the ferocious tornado has destroyed the entire land it passed through. From where has the force arisen, and where is it taking them?’
1 Comment
Theme 11 continues with the explication of complex material of the New Way. The author begins by noting that Thea regarded the earth to be an inflicted organ and that, spiritually, Death has become the ruling Lord. It is, time, she argues, for people to awaken and return the rule of the central being. Yet, we have had a vision of Oneness in the beautiful image of the Earth taken from the moon. Moreover, in 1956, the Mother announced that ‘the time has come’, indicating that the supramental seed of truth, which has penetrated to the deepest levels of the inconscient and Ignorance, is impelling the Earth to rise upward in consciousness. The secret key to renewal is the precise control engendered by Truth-Consciousness and governed by the power of Time. This is evolution at work that includes living simultaneously in the consciousness of the One and the Many, while immortality, not only spiritually, but physically as well.
The author draws on several works by Thea in her explanation of Theme 11. She turns to her earliest book, the Magical Carousal, a unique astrological treatise, to provide mythological symbols for understanding the evolutionary process taking place today, and its significance. The story is autobiographical, and the protagonists are revealed as none other than Thea and her son, referred to as Val and Pom, who understand that it involves collapse of the old world, undoing its knots to make room for the new. Indeed, the Mother said something new, a third thing and Truth-Consciousness is required to take root.
Thea was initiated by the Mother beginning in 1971, with her entry along with her 7-year-old son, into India on Vijaya Dasani, the 10th Day of Victory. From that day until 17 November 1973, and the Mother’s passing she was gifted with the keys to the cosmology of the New Way, understanding that both the Positive and the Negative serve the Purpose of the One. She also had the awareness to understand that, while, in 1950 Sri Aurobindo left his body, an aspect of the old creation, he returned by way of a supramental process, never previously accomplished, as the initial phenomenon of the new creation. At the present time, humankind is passing through an evolutionary crisis, and a choice of destiny. However, Thea announces that the new era has dawned, and using Aquarian symbolism, she writes…Flow waters of the spirit, flow…awaken the hearts of mankind, for the new era has dawned.