Theme 12: One Journey, One Calendar
Part One: Introduction
OM
bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ
tat savitur vareṇyaṃ
bhargo devasya dhīmahi
dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt
Rigveda 3.62.10
The Gayatri Mantra:
‘We choose the Supreme Light of the divine Sun;
we aspire that it may impel our minds.”
(translation, Sri Aurobindo)
Sri Aurobindo calls the Gayatri Mantra, ‘the chosen formula of the ancient Vedic religion’ and adds, ‘may we, with Gayatri, open our thoughts to the supreme Godhead, may we be impelled to move with the gods toward the solar world where resides the ‘supreme vision of man’ (The Secret of the Veda, Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, Volume 15, p. 480).
All the people throughout the earth who daily recite the glorious Gayatri mantra (above) aspire to join the ‘Guardians of the Light’, as Sri Aurobindo calls them, as they ascend toward the ‘luminous supramental heaven of Swar’. And what and where is Swar? And why was this ‘light’ of Swar to be protected?
Thea’s ‘applied cosmology’ takes up where Sri Aurobindo leaves off. She supports his concept that the Vedic Rishis had a highly developed sense of oneness of the Earth that is hardly known today. She refutes the ideas presented in a published article (D Chakrabarti, The Hindu, 6.2.2001) in which the author attempts to ‘drive a wedge between ancient Indian culture and the contemporary’. Thea indicates there may appear to be a severance from that ‘original seed’ of the Veda at a certain point in the evolution of consciousness. With the rise of Buddhism and the emphasis on ‘other-worldliness’, that consciousness of unity the Rishis enjoyed no longer permeated the civilisation. This was a necessary deviation and no doubt a painful one; the myths of the Puranic Age were the result of a nation under siege, and the Vedic seed took refuge in these ‘profound and delightful collections’ (Thea, the Sanctity of Materialism, 2001).
But in actual fact, she concludes, there was and is no schism between the most ancient Veda and the Hinduism of today. The ‘original seed’ made its way through the Ages, and reveals a connected process; it remains ever faithful to that seed experience.
Rather, what is happening today is a confusion – a result of the split between the sacred and the scientific. Cosmology suffered a blow when the Sayana (Tropical) Zodiac was replaced by the Nirayana (Constellational) Zodiac. Instead of the Earth’s own measure prevailing as in the Vedic Age, with primary importance given to the seasons and the calculation of the shortest and longest days of the year, the scientist stepped in and replaced the wisdom of the Seer. (ibid)
Part One:
The Vedic Journey
Sri Aurobindo describes ‘Swar’ as a state of Truth-Consciousness, hidden on the supramental plane, characterized by a wideness of higher being, a divine existence free and large. (The Secret of the Veda, op cit). To find or ascend to this consciousness located in the home of the gods, in the solar world, is both a battle and a journey. He associates it specifically with time, the Year (as in RV X, 62: ‘by the truth, in the revolution of the year, they broke Vala’).
He also refers to a specific duration of time in the journey, the ninth month through the tenth month (of the year), when the Aryan Warriors can overcome obstacles in the way and find and release the hidden rays of Sun/Light from the caves of the Panis (End Note 1).
It is false to think the Ancient Ones were ignorant of the ’motion of the spheres’ because they had no scientific knowledge, Thea affirms. They honored the annual revolution of the earth round the Sun and used the zodiac as a guide for their yearly journey (Symbols and the Question of Unity, 2nd ed. 2020, pp. 18-19). In fact, the Vedic civilization was so familiar with the cosmic script, they organized the entire society, their worship and festivals, around what they called, ‘the sacrifice’ of the year.
They saw the correspondence between the Earth’s revolution around our Sun, through the ecliptic, as the same inner journey of the soul to discover the Divine Truth-Consciousness or Swar. The fact that the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is an ellipse, not a circle, helps us to see this correspondence between the physical and the psychological, as well (image right). Thea explains her graphic:
‘Thus, mid-point in the ellipse is Aries, Cosmic Dawn, about March 21st. From there it swings away from the Sun and at its farthest point we are in the sign Cancer, in July, Cosmic Midnight, which represents in fact the plunge into inconscience, the “fall”, the movement farthest away from the Divine (Sun), the birth of the ego.
‘The movement continues around to the sign of Yoga, Libra, the other mid-way point opposite Aries. This is Cosmic Sunset, the sign of the awakening of consciousness; it occurs at the end of September. And from here we are brought to the fullest light in Cosmic Midday (Capricorn), the beginning of January, when the Earth is at its closest physical distance from the Sun. It is, in fact, the sign of the Golden Age, the Divine Mother in her most perfect manifestation.’ (ibid, p. 18)
The ancients’ journey through the year was fully in tune with the perfection of the Earth and how it worked. In Thea’s words, ‘they looked to the heavens and saw only a mirror of themselves’ (ibid). The Earth year was ‘a time-axis’ around which all citizens of that ancient civilization found their place. The Makar Sankranti, as the ‘gateway’ of the Sun’s entry into Capricorn marked the starting point of the Festival of Light – the most important time of the journey. On this day the entire civilization gathered to pay homage and to ‘seek the light’.
*
A shift occurred in the Vedic Dharma, about 2500 years ago, that produced a deep wound ‘in the heart and soul of the civilisation’ (Thea, The Evolutionary Avatar in the Cosmic Harmony and in Contemporary Vedic Culture, The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 8, no. 1). The realisation of Nirvana or dissolution was a part of that undermining; Thea writes that ‘the Vedic civilisation was shaken to the core’ (p. 25).
In fact, this was part of a wave that swept across the entire world as science emerged as separate from the sacred, imposing its secular character upon the Earth. The seers who were entrusted with preserving the knowledge, traditionally the Brahmin caste, were forced underground and divested of their unique mission. All castes lost their distinct cosmic credentials. Finally secularization of society left only empty forms of worship and celebration (see Theme Four – Chaturvarna in the Veda).
And of course, since the Time Axis of the year – or the Calendar – integrated Vedic society, and because Makar Sankranti was their main festival, this was the element that became undermined first and foremost. Doubts were created about the legitimacy of measuring the date and timing for the celebration of the festival where none should have arisen (End Note 2). After all, it was very easy to determine the shortest day of the year; that was all that was needed.
The festival of Makar Sankranti began to be celebrated after the shortest day of the Northern Hemisphere – and in India, in 2021, it is celebrated on 15 January, 23 days after the true date. Year after year this mis-measurement has taken its toll; this single act of undermining was to have far reaching consequences. The Vedic civilization which was totally linked to the fourfold cosmic harmony of the Equinoxes and Solstices became dislodged from its sacred moorings and succumbed to forces of inertia (End Note3). Now, 2000 years later it is experiencing a confusion that is affecting the whole of society.
Part Two:
The Vedic Journey and The New Way
Our journey today through The Gnostic Circle (image left) takes the same path as that followed by the Vedic civilization: it is based on the fourfold structure and harmonies of our Earth and balanced on her four Cardinal Pillars, the Equinoxes and Solstices.
And central to both stands the Earth, because ‘the transformation of humankind into a divine species was intuited by the Rishis to be on this Earth and not elsewhere.’ (Thea, The New Way 3, Ch. 18, ‘Power of the One’, p. 254)
The Rishis used images we are all familiar with to show the Divine Light struggling to evolve from the darkness at the core of matter. ‘Light’ and ‘dark’ are the symbols found in their hymns to describe the process of the Divine One emerging in human evolution. In Thea’s words, their hymns describe and proclaim ‘the Eye of Consciousness in a progressive state of awakening’ (ibid).
Today, our collective journey, like the Vedic Journey, opens with the Vernal Equinox, at the first Cardinal Pillar of the Earth on 20/21 March, with Agni, as leader. His very powers assure victory, i.e., the evolutionary drive to the summit will be completed. Thea calls this first stage or quarter Cosmic Dawn. Our opening experience is the Dawn Goddess Usha and her white steeds coming with the reddening rays of the rising morning Sun. These rays are coveted by the powers of Darkness, the ‘obstructors’; and the Rig Vedic myth soon centres on the struggle to possess these precious ‘offspring of the Sun’.
Our first breath at the moment of birth into material creation, can be symbolized as ‘the rising cosmic Dawn’: we become a ‘riotous burst of solar essence, like the great dance of Shiva’… and out of this, we must make a cosmos. (ibid, p 258)
The Earth swings away from the Sun as it approaches the June Solstice, the second stage of the journey, at the zodiacal sign Cancer (image right). Thea calls this quarter of time, Cosmic Midnight, (rather than Midday) because the Earth is in fact physically the farthest away it will ever be from the Light of the Sun. Cosmic Midnight corresponds to the inner struggle now taking place as the journey gets underway; the travelers through the Gnostic Circle, like the Aryan warriors, must find their way through the ‘path of crookedness’ and retrieve from the caves of the Panis, the ‘precious rays of sunlight’, stolen by these ‘hoarders of the light’.
Today’s Aryan Warrior is a representative of the human race, a pioneer of the new way; his/her dharma is to assure that the journey to the summit is not obstructed. ‘The Divine One at the heart of matter must be unveiled’. It is in this quarter of the journey that one must plunge into that darkness and find the ‘tiny particle of Light’, that luminous Ray coveted by titans and gods, which is our Soul.
‘When the individual experiences the tiny “seed” in the innermost core of his being, and when this has become an active ingredient in his evolution of consciousness… he/she becomes a whole and complete system…’ (ibid, p 258).
The movement continues toward the September 20/21 Equinox, at the zodiacal sign of Libra. At this third quarter of the yearly journey, called Cosmic Sunset, the yellowing rays of the sun are seen once again. However, at this critical juncture in the evolving consciousness, the soul is very far from ‘the light’, half way through the journey (or at the lower hemisphere in the circle – image left). A ‘reversal’ must be made in order to proceed toward higher dimensions.
Although the awakening soul desires to return to the Origin or union once again with the Divine, the Light, the rise upward demands a plunge into a deeper consciousness. And this is difficult, for humankind at this stage of evolution has an incomplete vision of the journey and the goal. For most people, Death reigns supreme and it is the end of the journey; it appears that there is no possibility of going beyond that.
The traveler of The New Way sees and acknowledges the new vision, that a final quarter is now open and the journey does not end in Scorpio, sign of Death and Degeneration (the 8th zodiacal sign). With the coming of the Evolutionary avatar of this 9th Manifestation, a new pathway has been opened and the goal is destined to go beyond the mental stage of the journey. It is completed only when they reach the fourth and final quarter – ‘Swar’, their Supramental ‘home’. Thea writes about the yoga of this stage:
‘Diti, queen of night, has lulled the eye of human awareness into so deep a sleep that man cannot see what is closest to him. He cannot see the light of his own planet. He cannot realise that what he searches for in nirvanic voids and transcendent heavens he must know and manifest here. Because as an Earth being, as a child of the Earth there is nowhere else for him to experience this heaven but here. The Aryan brings about the marriage of Heaven and Earth on his very own planetary home.’ (ibid, p. 257)
The Earth’s orbit moves round toward the sun once again, and from 21/22 December through March, the Earth is closest to the Light of the Sun, fully under the midday Sun. It is Cosmic Midday, the highest position of the Sun, ‘uttarayana’, that is, the sun’s rays cast no shadow. Today’s warrior, like the Aryan traveler, has successfully fought his/her own battles, through their own field of yoga, their very own Kurukshetra, and they are ready to enjoy the victory. They stand at the portals of Swar, and know this realm of light to be our own planet Earth.
‘It is a cosmological phenomenon we are living’, writes Thea; ‘the Aryan warrior, male and female, performs that magical alchemy for the Earth in his or her own consciousness being…’ (ibid).
‘Swar’ of the Veda covers the last segment of the zodiacal wheel, comprising the signs Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. The ‘Gateway’ to the final quarter is Capricorn. Any wonder, Thea asks, why the tenth sign of the Zodiac has been celebrated as the primary festival throughout India? Any wonder why the undermining by the falsehood attacked this festival and dislocated its timing from the December Solstice, shortest day of the year?
Part Three:
Supermind and the Calendar - any connection?
India, by destiny, is to be the Soul-Centre of the Earth; and she must accept that destiny – she has no choice in the matter. Among all the nations of the world, It is only India that has access to energies which go far deeper than the religious or political/social which govern the rest of the world. Other ancient civilisations have come and gone, but India’s connection to that ‘original seed’ of the Transcendent Divine has never been severed.
However, the nation is greatly handicapped now, she has ‘cast aside the wisdom of the Ancients’. She stands behind the rest of the world by 23 days,
Thea recounts an incident from the landmark Conference in 2010, held in Tirumala, (image right, Thea is third from the left side) December 24 – 26, in which she delivered a presentation at the First National Conference on Hindu Calendar Reform (End Note 4). She was unable to deliver her full presentation; however the student of Cosmic Harmonies can read the entire address (See References, end of Theme, for the link)
She writes that the speaker who followed her, ‘belittled’ her remarks in his opening statements: ‘This is science, not Veda’. At that moment she realised what India is up against, and is reminded of Sri Aurobindo’s words. As he probed the flexibility of the language and the ‘devices’ used by our ancient Vedic Fathers to give deeper meanings to their experience, he concludes that in the later ages their meanings were rejected (Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Ch 5, op cit, p. 57):
The huge obstacle facing the Avatar of this 9th Manifestation, Sri Aurobindo, is described by Thea as ‘The Lure of the Old, the Known’’. He and his Solar Line, (Themes 1 & 2) had to plunge into creation, instead of away from creation, into our Earth – an entirely new direction from the paths of the great spiritual giants of the past. For the future of a new humanity and a new Earth, it is the only way possible, Thea writes; and she quotes from Sri Aurobindo’s letter to a disciple (The New Way 3, Ch. 18, ‘The Power of the One’, p. 271 – 2):
‘This yoga aims at the conscious union with the Divine in the supermind and the transformation of the nature. The ordinary yogas go straight from Mind into some featureless condition of the cosmic silence and through it try to disappear upward into the Highest. The object of this yoga is to transcend mind and enter into the Divine Truth of Sachidananda which is not only static but dynamic, and raise the whole being into the truth.’
Humankind has paid a heavy price for this ‘escapism’ as Thea calls it; and she gives the example of the great sage Ramana Maharshi, whose spiritual path leads seekers into a ‘static peace of pure consciousness… Mind becomes a thing to be removed, or obliterated, or to be freed from… (the realizer) does not deal with the mental principle in the evolution of the species.’ (ibid)
Sri Aurobindo, and his Solar Line, have had to draw our human nature, poised entirely around Mind, toward a new world of possibilities, toward a higher stage of evolution, known as the Supramental. They have had to convince human nature to release her tenacious hold to the Ignorance, to break through the barriers of the past, to loosen the hold of the old spirituality.
An enlightened Calendar would surely have been an aid, Thea writes, a means to carry all of the nation toward the goal. However the ‘connection between Supermind and the calendar is not even suspected ‘because most of his followers do not realise that he was Vishnu’s 9th Avatar’ (Thea, Supermind and the Calendar – any Connection? 2011).
At the time of India’s independence, 1947, Thea notes, the Universal Calendar was wisely adopted by the nation for civic purposes, because it is ‘the most natural’, based on the Earth’s contribution to the Solar System – her fourfold division of the Equinoxes and Solstices. She reminds the reader that this Calendar predates Christianity in origin by many centuries; it was used throughout the ancient world of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and in the Vedic and Sangam Ages.
Unfortunately some Indian pundits carry a bias left over from colonial times and reject its use. The Universal Calendar, now used throughout the world is in fact the ancient Vedic calendar, originally the Julian Calendar of the Roman Empire: entirely pre-Christian.
And it is the same Calendar used by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the Ashram in Pondicherry. In fact, she writes, it is only with the Universal Calendar that she could establish the cosmic credentials of Sri Aurobindo; it would not have been possible for her to establish him as the 9th Avatar in the Line of Ten with the current Hindu Calendar (ibid). It should become obvious, she adds, that with the shift taken by the Hindu Calendar Reform Committee (see End Note 5) to use the Nirayana (constellational) system of computations instead of the Sayana, (Tropical zodiac, image left) the Falsehood is using its favoured strategy to keep the truth from being discovered. So many ‘avatars’ in the nation, everyone is an ‘avatar’; while the real Avatar of the 9th Manifestation is hidden!
Thea traces a clearly discernible thread over the years which shows opposition to the work of the Supramental Avatars. The ‘vested interests on the occult plane’ that opposed Hindu Calendar Reform are the same ones who opposed the Mother’s original plan for building her Temple (Theme Seven). In both these issues the dark forces of Ignorance attack or undermine the importance of gnostic Time, the Year. In her words:
‘Just as vested interest blocked a nationwide adoption of the Vedic system of calendrical time reckoning, so too did vested interests succeed in locking the materialization of the Mother’s vision in Auroville… however time moves on and when Gnostic Time is one’s ally the supramental Truth-Consciousness cannot fail to overtake the Field… That is where the new Cosmology enters. It unmasks these vested interest we find everywhere, contaminating everything with little regard for human sentiments…’ (ibid)
‘When the Brahmin caste, preserver of the tradition and keeper of the time-keys, was undermined and finally de-sanctified, the act of measuring and renewal passed entirely into the hands of secular science. The result has been noted by the Calendar Reform Committee in discussing the adoption of the Niryana (or sidereal) calendar, and not the tropical, or the so-called Western method:
Part Four: Guru Purnima
All Vedic Festivals had their origins in the cosmic harmonies – in our solar system with its fourfold division of the Solstices and Equinoxes. As shown in Parts 2 and 3 of this theme, the Year was honoured by this ancient civilization as if it was a living being; the days, night, months and seasons were for them a nourishing ‘Mother Earth’. And their sages and pundits had the task to see that the whole population partook of the rituals at the correct time; otherwise, the connection between heaven and earth (‘that side’ and ‘this side’) would be lost. What would be the purpose of the celebration?
One of the most important of these festivals was Guru Purnima, a time to honour and pay gratitude to one’s Guru, the one who brings light into our life, from out of the dark human condition. The festival continues to be one of the great days of celebration in all parts of India and Thea turns her attention to its cosmic origins (Guru Purnima, and other cosmic musings… 15 August, 2010).
The celebration should occur during the month of ‘aphelion’, when the Earth is farthest away from the sun, i.e., in the middle of Cancer, the fourth sign of the Tropical Zodiac, ‘Cosmic Midnight’, (21/22 June through 22 July). Thea writes that it is the perfect time to honour the Guru as the one who sheds light into darkness (or ignorance) because in the cosmic surround that is exactly what is happening: it is during the month of Cancer that Jupiter, the planet traditionally associated with ‘the guru’ – is exalted, that is, reaches its perfection.
‘…This wisdom has been incorporated in temple architecture of south India where Jupiter is honoured as Dakshinamurthy, precisely the Lord of the South, because the sign of his ’exaltation’ is indeed the south Cardinal Pole. He brings Light in the darkness to the whole nation through his southern abode of Exaltation.’ (ibid).
Our ancient Fathers were thoroughly familiar with the language of these cosmic harmonies; how marvelous the coherency and homogeneity of their knowledge! Thea proclaims. From a study of the cosmic origins of their festivals we too can celebrate, year after year, the eternal truth as a living body of knowledge. The celebration is totally casteless and creedless, it does not belong to any religion or denomination: ‘It is simply an enactment of the harmony of our solar system, exactly as it transpires in the heavens.’ (ibid).
Thus, from a cosmic point of view, Thea looks at the month of Adi/Cancer as a special time of ‘preparation’. As the Earth is passing through its southern rim (Dakshinayan), and moving farther from the Sun, it enacts a period of cosmic time which she calls Cosmic Midnight, a time of ‘gestation’. Adi, or Cancer, is not ‘inauspicious’ or ‘unclean’; rather, it is during these days that the earth’s soul and the individual soul withdraws and prepares to be fully born in its opposite pole of the year, six months later, in Cosmic Midday (Uttarayan).
The northern rim or ’run of time’, is when the soul of the Earth, and the soul within each of us, comes closest to our Sun, the Divine one, Creatrix of all light and to the degree that the soul prepares and purifies itself, it can approach its Sun and receive the Light which displaces darkness, ignorance.
All of this knowledge is lost if one celebrates the festival at the wrong time. And unfortunately most people in India are forced to follow a list of festival timings drawn up by pundits who are ignorant of these cosmic harmonies. As presented in Part 3 of this Theme, these followers of the Nirayana System use the wrong circle. Instead of the Tropical Zodiac with its fourfold division of solstices and equinoxes, – the Earth’s own measure of time – they search out in the Constellations for their festival timings.
But there are no Solstices and Equinoxes out there.
The fourfold division of our Earth exists only in the Tropical Zodiac with its four Cardinal points and their respective signs: Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. These never change, they are eternal and unchanging markers, and this is the circle that must be used for temple timings, as made clear by verses in the Rig Veda (1, 154, 48):
For the Rishi, the ‘wheel’ of our Earth is ONE and ‘unshakable’; all measuring takes place within this single circle – our own planet’s ecliptic within which the Earth and planets travel. Its 360 degrees are divided into 12 spokes or segments, each contains 30 celestial degrees. The Rishis knew that each of these 30 degree segments had meaning based on the pictographs or hieroglyphs they saw in the heavens; together they were a cosmic script which contained a higher body of knowledge. Thea elaborates:
‘.. the striking feature (of the Rig Veda) is that zodiacal wisdom comes through the hymns as a web of a sorts, as a backdrop that is not often referred to explicitly but is understood to be ever-present and is ‘assumed’ by the Rishis or Seers to be the foundation of the civilization for which the hymns were composed….
There is an assumption of a vast body of knowledge, of the zodiac not as a tool of prediction or prophecy as we find in astrology today, but as a cosmological framework into which went aspects of the art lost to us now…’ (Thea, The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 7, no. 2).
The importance which the civilization gave to the periods in which the Sun travels toward its farthest reaches, North and South, (uttarayana and dakshinayana), and their signs Capricorn and Cancer, is an example of a civilization long in possession of the zodiacal wisdom, Thea tells us. She presents other examples as well, all indicate ‘a knowledge tested and accepted by the entire civilization and firmly rooted in the culture’ – a knowledge which preceded the writing of the hymns. What is evident in the Veda is a civilization at its zenith: ‘it was there from the time the first Rishi observed that the cosmos mirrored the human condition and the evolution – as above, so below.’ (ibid)
The purpose of our Earth, according to all orthodox religions, is to be a ‘springboard’ to a Beyond, a place to work out karmic debts or to expiate one’s sins. In contrast, the ancient Veda offers another destiny of our Earth, and India is central. ‘The key is given in the zodiacal script and its ecliptic measure, In the Veda this is described as ‘the higher seat of our self-accomplishing’ or the pathway where ‘the many-horned herds of Light go travelling’. This is the path of 12 divided into 4, i.e., resting on the four Cardinal Poles of the equinoxes and solstices.’ (See Theme Three, Partition of India, and Theme Eight, Ganga, Soul of Indian Culture).
Thea lays this cosmic script of the Zodiac across the 360 degree circle of the Earth globe to form her geo-cosmological ruler (below). Each sign of 30 degrees is a stage in the individual’s as well as the Earth own evolution; the language of the zodiacal script describes an ‘initiation’, or a yogic process of transformation. Aries or Agni, leader of the hosts opens the 9 month initiation, and the journey comes to its height and closes in Capricorn (Makar in Sanskrit), the 10th sign or stage (see The Magical Carousel and Commentaries). Capricorn is also India’s own astrological ruler.
The current Nirayana System used in all temples for timings of rituals, discards this wisdom of the zodiac in favor of the Nakshatras, which are simply clusters of fixed stars. They do not measure an exact 30 degrees each, their glyphs vary greatly in size and overlap one another. They cannot be legitimately equated with the exact 30/30 days of the Tropical Zodiac as seen in Thea’s geo-cosmological ruler above.
Thus, from a cosmic point of view, Thea looks at the month of Adi/Cancer as a special time of ‘preparation’. As the Earth is passing through its southern rim (Dakshinayan), and moving farther from the Sun, it enacts a period of cosmic time which she calls Cosmic Midnight, a time of ‘gestation’. Adi, or Cancer, is not ‘inauspicious’ or ‘unclean’; rather, it is during these days that the earth’s soul and the individual soul withdraws and prepares to be fully born in its opposite pole of the year, six months later, in Cosmic Midday (Uttarayan).
But far more important, Thea adds:’… there is no knowledge content in the Naksastras unlike in the tropical zodiac of 12, which are actually the twelve stages of the initiate’s Vedic journey… (they) are simply named after the brightest star in the grouping, an imposition that has no basis in the sacred. ..’ (Ganga, Soul of Indian Culture, p. 6)
Despite the fact that our entire temple culture of South India is based on the Tropical Zodiac, the cosmic connection has been lost. Despite the fact that ancient texts such as the Brihad Samhita emphasises the special importance of two timings – the beginning of the Vedic year on the Equinox of March and the Solstice of December – our current calendar is woefully incorrect (Thea, A Calendar that Unifies, March 2009).
Makar Sankranti, which opens the Festival of Light has been disconnected from the shortest day of the year, and celebrated not on 21/22 December but on 14 January. And with this dislodging, if follows that Guru Purnima and other solar-lunar festivals also will be disconnected and celebrated 23 days late.
Sadly, even our natal horoscopes have been disconnected from the Tropical Zodiac, a person born in Cancer is told they are born in Leo, and so forth.
Thea exhorts those who understand to search for the ‘hidden knowledge’ – may they be so blessed to find and honour ‘the Guru’ who knows the difference between Cosmic Truth and Cosmic Ignorance.
Theme 12 - Summary and Conclusions:
The temple is the focal point of the Hindu society, and the calendar of festival timings serves as a ’binding web’ for the civilization.
‘…it naturally stands.’ writes Thea, ‘that the pundit’s duty is to respect the correct time factor as prescribed by the Veda itself, so that a harmony arises between Hindu society, the Earth and the cosmic surround. And for this binding power to be effectively established, the perfectly precise Zero Point, or Ayanamsha, where the Earthly and the Heavenly converge, is essential.‘ (Thea, The Zero, the Veda and the Divine Measure of the Year, May 2006, bold added)
However today, ‘un-Vedic measures’ prevail! Instead of harmony there is confusion. Thea gives a specific example of the Calendar confusion and its devastating effects in a four part essay titled, Origin and Nature of Hindu Decline (2006). That year, in Tamil Nadu, the transit of Jupiter was celebrated with appropriate rituals on three different days and as moving into two different signs. And the reason? There were three different days to choose from three different almanacs; so to accommodate all factions, all three dates were celebrated. Please note, she adds:
‘Guru moves into Scorpio or into Sagittarius, to the 210th degree or the 240th degree of the 360 degree circle of the year on one or the other – it cannot possibly be both… If no one can authoritatively say when Guru changed zodiacal signs, then we know the darkness has reached its deepest pitch…’.’ (ibid)
The Calendar must reflect the Cosmic Order.
Thea inaugurated the Movement for the Restoration of Vedic Wisdom (MRVW) at Skambha, in May 2006 to take the first steps to restore the correct calendar. She believed that if some sort of ‘restoration’ of Vedic Wisdom is to come about, we must first understand the nature of the decline (image left). The most important contribution the ‘Movement’ could make was to restore the nation’s ability to ‘re-connect’ again to that glorious wisdom of the Vedas. (ibid)
While reviewing the Brihat Samhita and other books in her library relating to the Saraswati civilisation and the ‘now-defunct’ Aryan Invasion Theory, Thea had a ‘breakthrough’. She saw that theories arose, based on the ‘word’ of Indologists, that sought to impress upon Hindu scholars in particular, that ‘the subcontinent was empty, it was only a vast receptive womb of nothingness that cultures from abroad could fill at their pleasure.’ (ibid)
To show the root cause of this falsehood, along with the particular TIME it was set in place became her goal. In the many articles Thea wrote during these years, she traces Myth and the astrological tradition of Temple culture, to show how each came to the aid of the dying Vedic Knowledge, slowly being forced underground’ by invading and foreign cultures.
About Myth, she explains:
‘… the Puranic Myths arose to become the secret repository of everything that was most sacred to Vedic culture; the myths were in turn preserved in the Hindu Temples, as if each one was a treasure-book in stone.’ (ibid)
And regarding ‘Jyotish’ she notes that its evolution in Hindu society best demonstrates how the timing of Hindu society’s rituals is the ‘binding web’ of the civilisation. Researchers have no trouble in relating the ‘decline’ of Vedic Wisdom to a variety of causes, but no one relates the loss to astrology, even though the sacred science of astrology was the language accepted by the entire Vedic community. Thea writes that the use of the Tropical Zodiac was ‘so pervasive that no explanation of its symbolism was required’. It took ‘approximately an entire millennium for the link with the civilization that composed these hymns to vanish…’ (ibid)
Although the language of the Brihat Samhita, compiled by Hindu astrologer – astronomer Varahamahira in early 6th century, bore no resemblance to the astrology/cosmology of the Rig Veda, Thea emphasises that its contents reveal the Earth-oriented nature of the Vedic spirit. Its encyclopedic knowledge always drew inspiration from the cosmic harmonies; in particular Thea explains. it preserved this very valuable information:
1) the symbols for each of the 12 months of the year, beginning with the zodiacal Aries the Ram, followed by Taurus the Bull,
2) the beginning of the year as the Equinox of March when days and nights are equal and ten months later the Hindu Samaj would celebrate Makar Sankranti on the Solstice of December, shortest day of the year.
However a decline had already set in. Thea calls attention to Iranian scholar Al- Biruni (circa 11th Century), travelling in India and translating Hindu texts nf astrology and cosmology into Arabic, who wrote: ‘The solstice has kept its place, the constellations have migrated, just the very opposite of what Varaha has fancied.’ (India, II, p.7).
Indian pundits considered his words to be more scientific than those of Varahamahira’s; they functioned as a ‘suggestion’ akin to a ‘deadening intoxicant’ which undermined the knowledge found in the Brihat Samhita, which definitively had put forth that
‘the constellations were not to be confused with the Tropical Zodiac which never varies in time and whose 12-month segments of the year are inseparable from the solstices and equinoxes.’ (ibid)
Hinduism is still paying the price for this undermining which is at the heart of its decline. The celebration of Makar Sankranti on 15 January, 23 days after the true Makar Sankranti indicates how this falsehood has affected all parts of Hindu society.
Getting to the ‘real’ Root Cause of Hindu Decline
In Part Three of her essay, Thea presents stirring excerpts written by Sri Aurobindo (image right) on ‘the real causes of that gradual decline and final arrest which Indian civilization no less than European suffered during the Middle Ages’ (‘On the Importance of Original Thinking’, Volume 5, Sri Aurobindo Archives, p. 27). Analyzing his insights it became obvious to her that he did not attribute the decline to the influence of long and repeated invasions of foreign influence and rule. Neither did he attribute the decline to the ‘caste system as evil.’
Laying the blame on foreign incursions and the degenerated caste system has served a ‘political agenda’, Thea writes, while all the time, the real cause of Hindu decline remains undetected.
The real ‘root cause’ was initiated over two millennia ago, and remains with us still, Thea concludes. The separation of the Solstices from the Zodiac, by Al-Biruni and his fellow astronomers, was simply an inevitable consequence of that (ibid, Origin and Nature of Hindu Decline).
‘It is the duty of pundits to re-instate the Vedic‘soul’ that is the foundation of Hinduism’, Thea concludes (Ibid, part four). She draws from the hymn to Vishnu who measures out the earthly worlds in his famous three strides, and achieves his goal in the third and highest Step: ‘the highest seat of self accomplishing’ .
‘Of Vishnu now I declare the mighty works, who has measured out the earthly worlds and that higher seat of our self-accomplishing he supports, he the wide-moving, in the threefold steps of his universal movement…
Those are the dwelling-places of ye twain which we desire as the goal of our journey where the many-horned herds of Light go travelling; the highest step of wide-moving Vishnu shines down on us here in its manifold vastness.’ (RV 1, 154.1)
The Earth’s ecliptic is that River of Light where the ‘many-horned herds’ go travelling – our planet, travelling through time and space, together with the other planets, creates the heavenly Harmony which the Seer SEES and HEARS (scruti).
Not only did the Rishis honour that ‘seat of our self-accomplishing’, that ‘river of light’; they did not extend their goal to a locality beyond. ‘They replicated the movements of their planetary abode within their own consciousness-being. They became THAT. The Harmony came to them SEEN and HEARD because of this exalted experience of Oneness very few have achieved since the age came to an end in which the Rishis lived.’ (ibid)
Thea calls attention to ‘the highlights’ of the above statement: ‘the Rishis never allowed themselves to drift hither and thither in the encompassing vastnesses’. Anchored to the ecliptic through a realization that was ‘the fulcrum of the Vedic Way, they journeyed through the Earth’s ‘River of Light’ – the ecliptic – without drifting off course to ‘a beyond’. Their realization of Skambha, the cosmic Pillar, that ‘Support of the World’, firmly rooted the ancient ones to this Earth world, and not ‘a beyond’ world’.
Over the ages, the ‘new seers’ allowed their consciousness to veer off. In contrast to the ‘ancient ones’, they were like vessels drifting through an infinite vastness – ‘their seeing eye becoming dissolved in the Beyond’. Thea states the devastating consequences of’ ‘loosing their footing’ (Skambha) on Earth:
–the zodiac was projected onto the backdrop of ‘the perpetually mutating constellations’, this became the only map, frozen into the Hindu Calendar’.
–Skambha was lost; the spiritual goal was no longer rooted into our own system based on the four Cardinal pillars of the Earth. The slow poison of “migrating constellations” had won the day.
–‘birth on Earth was considered a ‘fall’ or a ‘scourge’, and finally the entire earth was experienced as an illusion which demanded to be dissolved.’ (ibid). This radical shift from ‘Vedic Fullness’ to a search after ‘Nothingness’ shook the very foundations of the old Vedic order.
Thea reminds the reader, in summary, of Sri Aurobindo’s ever-hopeful words: ‘the Sun was indeed setting – but certainly to await a new and brighter Dawn.’ (ibid)
End – Theme 12
End Note 1
Sri Aurobindo refers to a specific time in the journey – the ninth and tenth month (of the year) – when the Aryan Warriors can overcome obstacles in the way and find and release the hidden rays of Sun/Light. This is specifically the time Thea calls Cosmic Midday, the highest point of the Sun, and the Makar Sankranti opens this period of time.
‘It is when the nine months’ sacrifice is prolonged through the tenth, it is when the Navagwas become the ten Dashagwas… that the Sun is found…’
(The Secret of the Veda, Part 3, CWSA, 15, p. 176-177)
End Note 2
‘…In the early text of the Brihad Samhita, there is no mention of a need for corrections to determining the date of this festival (Kumbha Mela) due to the shifting of the constellations (as Al Biruni suggested in his travel book, India). Varahamihira gives two keys to connect us to the cosmic harmonies: the March Equinox, Mahavishuva and the December Solstice, shortest day, Makar Sankranti , which falls nine months later.’ (Thea, Culture and Cosmos – 3, The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 8, no. 1, April 1993 )
End Note 3
The Rig Veda makes evident that the ancient cultures used the actual rhythms of the Earth. the balancing factor of the four Cardinal Points – as the basis for their Calendar.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Twelve spokes, one wheel, navels three.
Who can comprehend this?
On it are placed together
Three hundred and sixty like pegs.’
They shake not in the least.’ (RV 1.154.48)
End Note 4
Thea had an intense professional career in the sacred art of astrology prior to coming to India in 1971 (see About Thea, Home Page;) and after coming to the subcontinent, she continued writing and publishing a body of research about the Cosmic Harmonies of our Earth. She was in a good position to help people see that the ‘gateway’ or day of entrance of the Sun into Capricorn (Makar Sankranti) and the December Solstice are one and the same, and that these two festivals can never be separated.
End Note 5
Facts about the Hindu Calendar Reform Committee from Wikipedia 2021:
Senior Indian Astrophysicist Meghnad Saha was the head of the Calendar Reform Committee under the aegis of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Other members of the Committee were: A. C. Banerjee, K. K. Daftari, J. S. Karandikar, Gorakh Prasad, R. V. Vaidya and N. C. Lahiri. It was Saha’s effort, which led to the formation of the Committee. The task before the Committee was to prepare an accurate calendar based on scientific study, which could be adopted uniformly throughout India. It was a mammoth task. The Committee had to undertake a detailed study of thirty different calendars prevalent in different parts of the country. The task was further complicated by the integration of those calendars with religion and local sentiments. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in his preface to the Report of the Committee, published in 1955, wrote: “They (different calendars) represent past political divisions in the country … . Now that we have attained Independence, it is obviously desirable that there should be a certain uniformity in the calendar for our civic, social, and other purposes, and this should be done on a scientific approach to this problem.”[4] Usage started officially at 1 Chaitra 1879, Saka Era, or 22 March 1957.
Thea notes the following in an unpublished article:
‘When the Brahmin caste, preserver of the tradition and keeper of the time-keys, was undermined and finally de-sanctified, the act of measuring and renewal passed entirely into the hands of secular science. The result has been noted by the Calendar Reform Committee in discussing the adoption of the Niryana (or sidereal) calendar, and not the tropical, or the so-called Western method:
‘In continuing to follow the Nirayana system, the Hindu calendar makers are under delusion that they are following the path of Dharma, They are actually committing the whole Hindu society to Adharma.’
Comments
Related Books: One Journey, One Calendar
References: One Journey, One Calendar
Thea, The Sanctity of Materialism, 2001
‘…There is no such chasm between the most ancient Veda and the Hinduism of today. There is, on the contrary, a thoroughly organic development linking the two. This process starts from a point of Unity, and from that original ‘seed’ an evolution of consciousness makes its way through the ages, revealing a connected process which, while conditioned by time and circumstance, remains ever faithful to that original seed. There appears to be a severance at a certain point in this evolution…’
Thea, The Evolutionary Avatar in the Cosmic Harmony and in Contemporary Vedic Culture, The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 8, no. 1, April 1993
‘I wrote that Swar, or ‘heaven’ had descended upon Earth. This diagram helps us to appreciate the measurable character of the statement and its practical application. Swar of the Vedic fourfold division covers the last segment of the zodiacal wheel, comprising the signs Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The ‘gateway’ to this fourth and highest plane is Capricorn . Is it any surprise then that the date of the Makar Sankranti, or the Gateway of Capricorn, has always been celebrated throughout the land (India)? (Thea, Culture and Cosmos – 3, The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 8, no. 1, April 1993 )
Thea, A Delegate’s REPORT on the First National Panchanga Ganitam Conference, 30 December, 2010,
‘The recently concluded Samelan at the abode of Sri Venkateshwara in sacred Tirumala reached certain conclusions by decision of the organisers. Going by the resolutions passed and the press reports the next day, it would appear that there was ‘unanimity’ among the attendees. Actually the truth is quite another.
While it was true, as the Chairman remarked in his closing comments, that there were no fights and shouts and walkouts during the conference, and peace can be said to have prevailed throughout – in my view that peace was more like sleep. What was obvious to many is that there was an agenda set in place beforehand; and some delegates told me, when I asked what resolutions they thought would be passed, that the resolutions were ‘already decided’…’
Thea, Supermind and the Calendar – any Connection? 2011
‘…The connection between Supermind and the calendar is not suspected because most of Sri Aurobindo’s followers do not realise that he was Vishnu’s 9th Avatar. As tradition tells us, the Vishnu Avatar comes when the Dharma has reached its lowest ebb, certainly the current situation. His task is to re-establish that Dharma. But herein lies the root of the confusion because we all have different ideas of what that might be and what it might entail for contemporary society. But if we study carefully his life and work – factual and not only devotional – the method to carry out the transformation, in this case embracing an entire society and civilisation, becomes clear…’
Thea, The Choice of Cosmic Truth or Superstition – Message to India 3, 2013
‘There have been responses to my message pleading for a revision of the Hindu Calendar and the need to re-establish the cosmic connection Hindus have lost. These responses are predictable; they can be summed up in a few words, ‘The constellations have shifted and Makar/Capricorn is no longer there, it has moved by 23 days.’ It is as if the entire Samaj had been programmed to repeat endlessly and unthinkingly the pat reply astronomers have for a ‘shifting zodiac’.
None seem to care if this programmed response is right or wrong, so no questions are asked…
Thea, A Calendar that Unifies, Questions and Answers on Reforming the Hindu Calendar, 2016
Q. Pandit Nehru encouraged scientists to lead the way in calendar reform, but you say that science itself has been the problem. What do you mean?
A. It is not the duty of scientists to interpret Vedic injunctions. This is not their domain. It is the duty of men and women versed in the language of cosmic harmonies based on direct yogic experiences, of the Vedic type, I must add. Clearly in the Committee for Calendar Reform in 1953, there was no such person. In my experience I have not come across anyone who has undergone a sadhana for this express purpose. The result is what we have today – a calendar that cannot unify 80% of the energies of the nation.
Thea, Transcendence and the Imminence of the One, (originally published as Part I of Time & Imperishability, 1997)
‘Mahakala is not only destruction, for the supreme Truth is a triune manifestation (creation, preservation and dissolution/destruction) – and every end initiates a new beginning.
But for the process of destruction to be just one phase of an eternal mechanism, something must necessarily survive the devastation, something must remain ever unmoved, untouched, uncontaminated by the sting of death.
The loss of the definitive knowledge of just what that imperishable core is, can safely be held as the reason for the enactment of the collective death-wish that presently plagues our society…’
Thea, The Emerging Cosmos: a Paper prepared for a Symposium on ‘The Human Condition’, The Vishaal Newsletter, Supplement, May 1987
‘The direction must cease to be otherworldly…
How is this achieved? The new axis is not metaphysical. It is a pivot that comes into being in accordance with precise evolutionary laws involving time. By working with time in a particular manner, it is possible to restructure the consciousness, and ultimately the physical being, around a higher pivot. This cannot be accomplished while religions and the old spirituality block the process by emphasis on a metaphysical experience that disengages the human being from any spiritually and materially meaningful contact with the physical world, and consequently absolves him from any responsibility therein… ‘
Thea, Contours of the Binary Creation, 2 May 2015
‘Our civilisation, societies the world over are the outcome of this fragmentary appreciation of life. Diti would be another name for Eve. In the Biblical tale the task and its trajectory are made evident: the Old Testament offers a very exact description of the Mental/Binary Creation of Adam and Eve. It lays bare the trials and tribulations of the races on Earth that bear the burden of the Old – the Mental/Binary structure – in the throes of a process of ever greater division (Diti’s expertise) until finally in the last book of the New Testament, The Revelation, the conquering principle of the Soul is described and the new order of Unity, based on the number 12, can then take its place on the planet with the perception of a complete system by unveiling the higher hemisphere and each thing can be put in its rightful place…’
Thea, Those Unsettling New Paradigms, 19 July 2015
‘All is not doom and gloom however. The Vishnu Avatar’s mission stands completed. The Solar Line he heads covers all the bases, even this one, perhaps the most significant for Hindus today. The Third in the Line comes with the express mission of dismantling this falsehood and re-establishing the supremacy of Shiva as Mahakala. She takes birth to re-establish the tropical zodiac as the foundational language of the Tradition, for there are no Cardinal Poles – equinoxes and solstices – in the sidereal circle of the fixed stars beyond our solar system…
Thus the Third’s mission is completed with the New Way and its updated cosmology. Those who see and wish to follow the Journey of the Rig Veda have this new paradigm at their disposal…’
Thea, Fission and Fusion: Symbols of the Old World and the New, The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 4, No. 2, June 1989
‘…I have presented a fascinating diagram the Mother drew for a disciple: a circle divided into 9 parts which she indicated contained real occult power and knowledge. Apart from the fact that the 9 division of the Circle has been our major key of knowledge, the subtle details of her drawing explicitly confirm just what I am describing in these pages: at the 4.5 (of the Gnostic Circle) the true experience brings release of this tremendous Energy, the fuel for the acceleration which carries us to new frontiers…’
The Vedic Altar Updated : An Introduction
‘It is something we are searching for. Perhaps not merely searching for, but building.
We are being used so that we may participate in the anifestation of that which is as yet inconcievable for everyone, because it is not yet there. It is an expression that is yet to come..’ (Excerpt from The Mother’s Agenda, 24 May 1962)
In this Introduction to essays on the Chamber of the Mother’s Temple, Thea demonstrates how the Third and Fourth stages of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga fulfilled the Mother’s search ‘for the third thing’ – something yet to be discovered.
Thea, The Importance of Makar Sankranti in Hindu Calendar Reform, Paper delivered at the Panchanga Ganitam Conference, Tirumala India, December 2010
‘…The issue before us is to retrace our steps and to recover that Order once again. Fortunately, this is not at all difficult and can be done immediately. The cosmos we are a part of is, for all practical purposes, eternal. The harmony today is exactly what it was in the Vedic Age; it moves, its rhythms multiply, they rise and fall, but its basic structure remains unchanged within which these variations occur. The key to understand the cosmos is to experience rest and motion as simultaneous, eternal principles. This underlying constant is the fourfold balance on the Equinoxes and Solstices, the measure of 365 days of our Earth Year…’
Thea, The Power of the One, The Vishaal Newsletter, Volume 1 No 1, April 1986.
In the Rig Veda we find a unique cosmology. The countless hymns which have been orally transmitted from teacher to disciple, and thus handed down through the aeons, describe the same cosmological process detailed in this study (The New Way). It is the story of the evolution of human consciousness in the context of the entire cosmic manifestation. That is, the hymns describe the Absolute’s process of manifestation in human evolution, or the eye of Consciousness in a progressive state of awakening and affirmation. In the tale this ‘eye’ is represented by the Sun. And the field in which the awakening is achieved, the victory secured, is the Earth.’
Thea, On reorienting The Self Toward Vedic Consciousness- Letters From Patrizia Norelli- Bachelet to an Inquirer, 5 November 2006
‘…The Light we seek, hidden within the time experience unique to this planet because of its rotational rhythms and position in the System, is compressed to a point at each Makar Sankranti.
This is the itinerary of the ecliptic Journey, the setting, the stage, the base of the Rishi’s Sacrifice. There are landmarks, balancing pillars along the way in this journey – the four Cardinal Points which are unchanging, immutably positioned in time, and because of which they can provide stability to the individual and to the collectivity; therefore they bear eternal relevance. . . .