. . . In the flow of time through the Gnostic Circle, the second quarter brings to the evolutionary experience the possibility of unveiling the One in the Core. By a lived experience the immobile amidst the mobile is unveiled. Or rather, the power this condition of supreme immobility generates is released. In Volume 1, Chapter 3, a new understanding of non-violence was discussed in detail. With respect to Mahatma Gandhi’s way, the path described in The New Way may not be satisfying to some seekers, insofar as this mechanism views violence as disguised in many attitudes which the public considers to be the epitome of non-violence. But the true essence of the non-violent way is a grand reality entirely involved with Agni, the divine Child. The power that Agni represents is the power that can alter conditions in our society and bring about a control in the sphere of the multiple which gradually establishes a harmony in the periphery and draws all related elements to itself on the basis of their truth-essence. This divine Child is also Kartikeya or Murugan, Shiva’s son. Hence it is written in the Puranas that he conquers when but a mere lad of seven. How are we to understand this mythological image of a child conquering the mightiest of the Titans? The discussion that follows will throw light on the true and deep meaning of the myth. For this purpose, let us use the Rig Vedic myth as our focal point, bearing in mind that Agni and Kartikeya are one and the same Godhead.
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. 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.
Thus at the heart of Vedic cosmology stands the Earth. She is central to that most ancient of ways. The Rishis of old left us in these hymns a taste of a perception prior to our historic times which knew the Earth to be an integral part of the divinisation of consciousness. The transformation of humankind into a divine species was intuited by the Rishis to be on this Earth and not elsewhere; and thus this grand cosmology, not denying the planet we inhabit but rather centering the entire process upon it – both the struggle and the ultimate victory, as well as the enjoyment of those boons that hard fought battle could bring – comes to us in images we all know of life as it is experienced daily on Earth.
The initial focal point of the cosmology is thus the experience of Dawn, Usha as she is called, and her white steed. The play involves hence the early rays of a rising Sun. These rays, this light, this ‘cow’ of plenty – giver of the most complete food of our world – are the coveted elements of the cosmology, and the Vedic myth centres on the struggle between the light and the dark ‘forces’ to secure possession of these most precious offspring of the Sun.
After the Dawn and the first manifestation of these splendid Rays, the struggle begins and in the Rig Veda it is presented in the form of the experience we know best, the play of light and darkness, or the experience of day and night. The revolution of the Earth on her axis and around her Sun describes thus a process that is not merely mechanical but is most profoundly psychological. The Rays that are ‘stolen’ by the dark forces, the ‘hoarders of the light’ called the Panis in the myth, are indeed both the solar rays and the more subtle but infinitely more meaningful rays of the truth-consciousness Sun. For the Vedic seer there was no difference between the two: the symbol was the thing symbolised.
‘Being still the symbol to reach through it the thing that symbolises itself, to realise the symbol, is our fulfilment’, Sri Aurobindo has written. And by these words he reveals the poise of the ancient Rishi, in whom symbol and symbolised fused at the culmination of his journey through the Vedic way. This way was the way of the human being on the road to a higher, godlike species. This is the Aryan who journeys to his home at the highest point of the cosmological Mountain, whereto he carries those mighty Rays of the Sun which he has retrieved from the Dasyus, the dark powers who exist apparently to obstruct the Aryan and hold back the progression, the evolution of this elect representative of the human race.
The Aryan, when he has reached his ‘home’ in the tenth month of the odyssey, has indeed ‘realised the symbol’. He has become the Sun. Or better, he has unveiled that Light in the depths of his consciousness-being; he has vanquished in himself the Dasyus, the sons of Diti, that formidable Mother of Darkness and queen of the night. He is thus the child of Earth, this unconquerable Aryan warrior. He is the pioneer of this new way, the way of the Symbol become manifest.
The cosmology presented in The New Way is the same as that of the Rig Veda. The images we use are identical; they concern the experience of the Ray – that offspring of the Sun. Time for us, as for the ancient Rishi, is the womb in which this play takes place. And more, it is the gestator of the entire process. It is the creator and the destroyer, the nourisher and the consumer, the Mother of Light as well as Diti, the womb of a midnight Darkness.
The periods Time marks out on our planet are thus essential to understand in their relationship to the transformation of consciousness and the process of divinisation. And in our new cosmology we have the added factor that by means of the Gnostic Circle time is rendered concrete and far less elusive. It is, moreover, the sustainer of the individual journey as well as that of the collectivity. And thus by understanding Time in the sense revealed in The New Way we are immediately brought to the threshold of a cosmic consciousness, opening up to the realisation of a harmonised One and Many.
There are four major demarcations of the solar experience in the Gnostic Circle. These are the four Cardinal points which correspond to the principal positions of the Earth with respect to the Sun in her daily rotation. They are Dawn, Midday, Sunset and Midnight. They correspond to the Zero degrees of Aries, Capricorn, Libra and Cancer respectively. Each quarter of the wheel we have been discussing thus belongs to one of these four cardinal points and expresses a particular relationship with the Sun. However, the progression is twofold, as has been described in this study. The experience of this solar essence is both involved and evolved. We can best understand this by referring to the focal point of The New Way cosmology, the Solar Line. The Descent is the process of involution of that Solar Ray. In Volume 2 this was related to the Temple and the descending Ray into the globe in the Core which represents the Earth. On the other hand the human being, the Aryan hero, rises into the Chamber from below. But in that sacred cavity of the Temple, in its sanctum sanctorum, his consciousness meets the Divine and the two fuse. The way of evolution joins involution, and thus Agni, the child who is the fruit of this reversal of consciousness and intermingling, becomes the leader of the Aryan hosts. He then, by this power, completes the journey in the evolutionary rise to the Summit.
In The New Way cosmology the experience of the Solar Line moves from Dawn to Midday to Sunset to Midnight. The human being in Earth Time however is plunged immediately into darkness in his experience. After the first rays of the Sun bathe his rising eye of consciousness, rather than follow the path of the Gods he must journey through the dark and labyrinthine corridors of the Titan stronghold, the ‘path of crookedness’ as it is called in the Rig Veda. First he encounters Diti, that mother of the midnight Darkness. This is the Cardinal point of Cancer. In the Vedic symbolism it is the cave/womb that has swallowed the light, the Rays of the Sun. The Earth’s rotation on her axis has produced this terreo-cosmogonical phenomenon. Time has consumed the light; time must also make it manifest once more. Thus the next point is sunset, 0° Libra and the mellow rays are perceivable once again. But at that point the reversal is demanded, whereby the further progression in and of Time transforms that point in the wheel to the experience of Dawn. That is, by giving birth to the divine Agni in the depths of his consciousness, the Libra threshold is transformed from the experience of the setting Sun to that of its rise. Thus the Divine is made manifest on Earth, in the evolving consciousness of the human being and by experiencing this reversal, passage to the fourth Cardinal point is made possible. The journey does not end in Scorpio; Diti does not consume the creature she has formed in her womb of darkness, but rather she allows it to continue the journey and to reach the true Aryan home in Capricorn.
What is the secret of that great Reversal then? How does it become the Dawn and cease to signify the setting Sun, which then makes of the cave of Scorpio the tomb of the light, physical and otherwise?
It is when the plunge into the inner universe is effected and what is without is realised within. The ‘fulfilment’ Sri Aurobindo writes of is thus this colossal experience of the inner universe, whereby the individual creates or unveils in his or her own innermost dimensions what is symbolised outside. The cosmology of The New Way hence details all the stages on the way to this sacred experience. It details the process for the individual no less than for the collectivity. And the language it uses is the same as the Vedic Rishis: the harmony of the cosmos and the progression of Time centred on our planetary home, Earth.
However, to follow this way means to accept and not to reject the Earth. Hence in view of the Earth-centredness of the supramental manifestation, the new way departs from others, precisely because Diti, the 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.
Time thus devours the Light, the rays of the Sun. But it is time itself that forces its re-emergence. Hence we cannot escape Time on this Earth we inhabit and thereby hope to reach the summit. We must use Time for the task. However, this entails a discovery of the means by which what is perishable must be made imperishable. We must experience the alchemy of transformation whereby the Immortal is born in us and redeems our mortality.
Various stages in the core realisation assist in the reversal process. First there is the experience of the Dawn, as it were. It is the early rise of the Dawn Goddess. Rays of light, particles burst forth in a formidable, a dazzling display of energy. These are thrust into the atmosphere of our consciousness. Or rather, by our plunge into the Earth dimension at birth, we become these very particles of consciousness-force. All is, however, a chaotic and riotous burst of the solar essence, the great dance of Shiva. We discover our solar essence; we are the Sun. This is our inner Dawn.
Thereafter, a deeper level in the experience must be reached. This first dazzling chaos, which reveals to us our inner universe and hence our sublime completeness or the wholeness of all our parts, must be made a cosmos. Out of the initial inner explosion the alchemist must commence to create his system, his solar world. It is then that the Core in its fullest dimensions must come into being. The divine Child must be unveiled, for he is the One who binds, the magnetic power that forces the experience of integration of all the parts and obliges them to accept the rhythm of the inner Sun and to experience harmony of the unity and the multiplicity. This in the Gnostic Circle time journey is the realisation of the second quarter and the 3 Point. It is the quarter of the Midnight Darkness, for precisely when one has plunged into the most profound depths of the manifestation one encounters that tiny particle of Light, that luminous Ray coveted by titans and gods which Diti holds in her womb. She is the cave of the Past. She consumes and loathes to release her prize. But the pioneer of the new way will oblige the Mother of Darkness to become transformed into the Goddess of Light.
When the initiate has succeeded in giving birth to Agni in his core, how does this translate itself in the experience of life, as an individual and as a member of society, on Earth, not elsewhere?
The answer to this is the great secret of Salvation – individually and collectively. This realisation discloses the mechanism whereby all elements, those positive as well as negative, are made to serve the purposes of the One, or the new way of the supramental Sun. The structure of the atom reveals the mechanism. 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 via the attainment of perfect equilibrium, of a perfect balancing of the two universal axes, contraction and expansion, he becomes a whole and complete System. He has unveiled the Gnostic Circle in himself and integrated all its parts. At that point all the particles combine to serve the purposes of the Seed, just as in nuclear physics we see that negative and positive elements do indeed harmonise in that infinitesimal universe and by means of complementation they succeed in recreating in microscopic dimensions what is seen in the macrocosm we inhabit as a superb harmony.
The world in which we live is a world of light and shadow. And we must accept that world as our field of yoga, our very own Kurukshetra – where we fight the battle and where we win and enjoy the victory. Thus all the elements have to be integrated if we accept this field and desire to make of our system in evolution a cosmos and not a chaos.
In the ancient Vedic way the Rishi was precisely engaged in the creation of an inner cosmos, a universe whole and complete. Hence like the new way, which moves along the lines of the supramental yoga, the Rishi evoked the elements of this very cosmos he inhabited. But we are made aware of the extent to which the human being has departed from this Earth-centred vision by the fact that latter-day scholars have unanimously labelled those great initiates ‘nature worshippers’, with the connotation of pagan and of course ‘uncivilised’, or primitive. This was not only the judgement of Western scholarship but Eastern as well, in view of the influence the West exerted on India during the colonial period. However, even prior to this experience, India had lost the key to her ancient way when the cosmos was viewed as a disturbing element in the individual’s quest, when the Mother was seen only in her aspect of darkness and became in the seeker’s consciousness nothing but the shadow of a higher truth that transcended her.
Science worships the Mother. But for science too the worship is blind and ignorant. It has created the whore of Babylon who is none other than Diti of the Vedas, who consumes and smothers, who hoards the light and by the power of inertia accumulated in this stifling embrace pretends thereby to destroy the races of Earth. However, the new way rises. The Aryan warrior is a fact we cannot ignore. Aditi is, and her realm stands above Diti’s. Her point in the Gnostic Circle is Capricorn, in direct opposition to Cancer, the realm of Diti’s midnight
darkness . . .
The Gnostic Circle is not fragmentary, hence Cancer and Capricorn must be seen as complementary poles and Diti and Aditi as two aspects of something in itself whole and complete. This wholeness is reflected in the entire wheel. In the Rig Veda the various segments of the Gnostic Circle are expressed as powers, divine and anti-divine, light and dark, and so forth. The light powers are the Gods, the offspring of Aditi. But these divine elements accomplish their task within the same field that the dark forces carry on their labour of obstruction.
As we are aware, this is exactly the condition of our endeavour. Throughout these volumes the true state of our world has been described, and thereby the initiate is made aware that today, no less than in aeons past, the battle must be waged in the midst of the very conditions we seek to transform but that are the powers of a very great Mother of Inertia. And indeed this must be so, because our world is a paradise of harmony of all the parts. It is hell when vision is fragmentary, when the eye of consciousness sleeps, when light and dark are not known to be complementary powers, each fulfilling the one goal, though one positively and the other negatively, yet still a part of the same labour. Above all our world is a hell when we have not known the womb in which all this has its play. When we have not known Whole Time and the full journey. When our eye of awareness succumbs to inertia and accepts a continued sleep in Diti’s realm of the past, cut off from the whole, living as the living dead in the kingdom of Pluto, an underworld of darkness.
The Whore of Babylon is a formidable reality of our times. She has accumulated such power, such colossal quantities of ‘time energy’, that we stand before her gaping mouth hypnotised by her might and ready to be consumed. The whole of our civilisation is food for her insatiable appetite.
Yet it must be pointed out again that the Whore is not an isolated figure of a play in a private theatre. She is nestled in that same womb of Whole Time. Hence the energy she hoards, more colossal now than ever before, is itself within that total movement of Time. The significance is thus that, by a particular mechanism of which time itself is the creator, the power she has so laboriously accumulated must find its way out of her womb and ultimately serve the new creation of which she is mother no less than Aditi. Indeed the principal characteristic of Diti and her sons is a divisive eye, a fragmented consciousness which does not permit them to see their true role and the service they render to the rise of a new world.
The quantity of energy Diti hoards at present is thus more formidable than ever before. It is such that, by the universal character of the movement the Earth now fosters, it can annihilate the entire planet. But what does this show us? It reveals to one who sees the full scenario and perceives the true roles of all the actors that it is precisely this factor of unprecedented destructive power which indicates, more than any other aspect of our twentieth-century life that the time of the new way has come. And that the new creation being fostered by all powers – the dark no less than the light – is a child divine, herald of a race of supramental beings. We stand, as a civilisation lost yet hopeful, at the gates of Heaven. . .
The question is, how can we experience the release of power Diti (or the Whore of Babylon) holds in an orderly, controlled fashion, whereby it serves the purposes of the new creation, invincible as it is and therefore immune to the experience of destruction? Moreover, we understand that the energy thus hoarded is indispensable for the rise to the Capricorn summit – nay, it is known to be precisely the power which is used for the accelerated advance of our times. The mechanism reveals that if the experience is complete it is Diti herself who is seen as the favoured instrument of the Supreme in that, by holding back on the basis of inertia and resistance, she nurtures the very energy in her magical accumulator which the children of Aditi may use to reach the summit. And in this action Time is her tool: Time restrains, Time gestates, Time releases.
It is a cosmological phenomenon we are living. The Aryan warrior, male and female, performs this magical alchemy for the Earth in his or her own consciousness-being. The occult physics revealed in The New Way is the method whereby control of all the parts is secured and everything then becomes the instrument for the Birth.
Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
Excerpted from The New Way, Volume 3, Chapter 18