Even as the individual has a psychic being which is his true self,
governing more or less openly his destiny,
each nation too has its psychic being which is its true self,
moulding its destiny from behind the veil;
it is the soul of the country, the national genius, the spirit of the people,
the centre of national aspiration, the fountain-head of all that is
noble, great and generous in the life of a country.
True patriots feel its presence as a tangible reality.
It is this which in India has been made almost into a divine being
and all who love truly their country call it ‘Mother India’
(Bharat Mata), and it is to her that they daily
address a prayer for the welfare of their country. It is she
who symbolises and incarnates the true ideal of the country,
its true mission in the world.
The Mother
The central shaft of the Mother’s unique chamber is similar to an Indian raga; the latter is equally an axial alignment and as subtle as the one the Mother devised for her Temple. But while the raga is played around an axis of SOUND, the axis of the Mother’s chamber is of LIGHT. But both have a similar function and perhaps this comparison will help the listener to understand the fundamental importance of the drone, the axis of the raga. For it is the drone which acts as a sort of undifferentiated background shaft of sound. The raga is then the differentiated alignments corresponding to the Earth’s movements around the Sun. Each of the 72 known ragas are thus expressions of the Earth’s position at different periods of the year and day. They are categorised according to a seasonal alignment, depending directly upon the tilt of the Earth on her axis and the Sun’s southern and northernmost reaches. And then there are the ragas corresponding to the time of the day which are determined by the Earth’s revolution around her own axis. Briefly, this highlights the extraordinary importance of alignment in the cultural fabric of ancient and modern India.
These categorisations of the 9 x 8 ragas are the only features which help us to understand, still today, that the music of old on the subcontinent was cosmically founded. But they tell us even more. They reveal unmistakably the Earth-oriented nature of the inspiration. The structure of Indian music highlights better than anything else what I consider to be the essential premise of Hinduism: Fulness versus the Void. In music this is emphasised, and I would say it is the basic ‘message’ of the raga, particularly because of the Earth-oriented nature of its structure. Thus the drone is that inspired rendering of the Sound of Silence, this is clear. But there is a deeper purpose in establishing all Indian music around the sound-axis of the drone. It is to convey that Silence is not to be mistaken for emptiness. The drone is therefore a permanent, uninterrupted background. It never ceases, never leaves gaps, voids, intervals which are devoid of the sound, even a ‘sound’ which represents Silence, thereby establishing that the cosmic manifestation is equally a creation which arises out of and abides within this sacred Fulness. This is the fundamental importance of the drone, the reason for which, perhaps of all Vedic cultural expressions, music is the most sublime. And again, moving even deeper, the ragas focus our attention on the two phenomena which I have been discussing at length in this series: the tilt of the Earth and its axial rotation. Included in this is the shift of the Earth’s equatorial plane which produces the southern and northern extreme positions of the Sun.
These movements are also found central to the Mother’s inspiration, given the prominence she allotted to the 15-step entrance into the chamber and the 12-sided walls which she related explicitly to the months of the year. But there is much more in her design, in particular the central shaft of Light, the Ray falling on the globe, filling it with the light of the Sun in an uninterrupted play. It is this ‘play’ that the Mother described as ‘the symbol of the future realisation’. But, from this analysis, it would seem that the ‘play’ not only belongs to the future but was central to the ancient yoga of the Rig Veda. It is only when we discover the meaning of the exact measurements she gave for the Ray that we begin to realise how accurate her description of this interchange was. For indeed, it carries us right to the portals of the ancient inspiration of the Indian raga at the dawn of civilisation. We realise then that in this discovery also lies the key to the renovation many are seeking in the field of music itself.
However, when the above is unveiled the result is likely to be surprising. The question of renovation itself will be transformed as we begin to hear with our new auditory faculties enhanced by a wideness and depth brought about by this expanded cosmic vision.
It was in the October 1989 issue of VISHAAL that I first began writing on this subject. I described the drone as the element of unity, or the underlying ‘sound of silence’ as the integrating factor, the fabric where and upon which all sound finds its being. The drone is to the raga what the Vedic ecliptic base is to India. The latter is also a constant upon which the ‘sounds’ of the varied spiritual expressions have been played throughout the ages. They are indeed akin to planets, or ‘notes’. And their purpose is similar to the function of the planets in our solar system. Or else the similar role of the notes of the scale: they differentiate, they elaborate, they diversify and render audible what would be obliged to remain silent and eternally a prisoner of its inappreciable unity. Indeed, in such a scenario, unity would not exist. There would be only Nonbeing. For unity is only rendered appreciable when this differentiation takes place and permits the consciousness to realise the essential oneness of this creation.
In each of these phenomena there is a unifying element, a factor common to all which makes the differentiation possible. This factor is Time. In the solar system the planets influence not by emitting a special ray or wave, which then causes a person born ‘under that star’, in the astrologer’s jargon, to behave in a particular manner or to enjoy a certain destiny. That is, it is not by any sort of physical factor, or wave, or emanation, of this order that the planets ‘influence’ our destiny. Rather, the influence is simply time. The function of a planet in orbit of the Sun is similar to the tala or time of the raga which the percussion instrument reproduces in the Indian musical complex. The beat or ‘pulse’ that comes into being is due to a special interaction between the Earth and the Sun and their respective and interconnected alignments.
Time’s Energy
It is known now, after further planetary probes and observations from the Hubble telescope in outer space, that Jupiter has a pulse. It experiences a regulated contraction and expansion of its mass which was measured by the several different probes. It is akin to a pulsation, as if the planet were indeed a living organism. We know also that the Earth has a pulse, once in every sidereal day – or 2 pulsations every 24 hours (see ‘Culture and Cosmos’, TVN 4/4, October 1989), and of course that the Sun’s pulse is an exact 9 in our 24-hour day. Thus one pulsates at the 12 mark, the other gives 9 beats. Together they recall the structure of the Gnostic Circle, 9 and 12. But what has not been discovered yet is the origin of all these pulsations, contractions, expansions and so forth. For that discovery to be made, science will have to come much closer to a discovery of the role Time plays in the gestation not only of a human being but of a solar system as well. Indeed, it will have to appreciate the true creative function of this universal power and that Time did not start with the Big Bang, as science sustains. The singularity which, according to scientific cosmologists, gave birth to Time and the universe is in fact compressed time energy. Russian scientists were closer to the mark when they sought to explore this question of ‘energy locked in time’ and realised that in this discovery would lie the road to unimaginable concentration of power, and that it would grant the discoverer an unlimited source of energy.
To return to the raga, its cosmic character would be impossible to establish without the drone in the structure of the music, its character determined by the particular alignment (attunement) of the planet with the central Sun. In the ideal circumstance, the instrumentalist or vocalist becomes attuned/aligned with that same cosmic harmony in the act of improvisation upon the theme of the raga. Without such an attunement, there is little hope of the true essence of the music to be realised. And it must be said that this question of ‘improvisation’ is another element which strengthens our perception of the role of the Third Power in the Indian destiny, or the Individual Divine. Indian music, because of this element, is an entirely individualistic experience. But this we shall discuss further on. That is, the role of the individual in this cosmic context.
Certainly many thousands of years ago on the subcontinent, music was a yoga. The same may be said for dance and all the other plastic art forms. The Vedic Seers gave birth to these forms via the special processes of yoga known in those ancient times and now lost. Central to the experience was alignment. The Seer had to be aligned (attuned) in a particular manner so as to ‘hear’ those special sounds. This was not a mental working, just as the Mother’s vision of the chamber was not mental or thought out by the processes of mind. Nor was the act of measuring which immediately followed the vision. The inspiration came because of that alignment or attunement. A raga was born simply because the Seer was in perfect harmony or alignment with the cosmos and he or she could only be the vehicle for the transmission of pure and unadulterated forms. The Mother mentioned this explicitly in what have come to be known as the Matrimandir Dialogues (see TVN, 1/5 & 1/6). It is this alignment which then places one in a position to be a transmitter of a pure and uncontaminated form.
This is unknown to our civilisation. The Chamber of the Mother’s original vision is the only pure and uncontaminated art form in existence today and a product of our very times. Unfortunately, it was so pure and exceptional that it found no executors who could rise to the occasion and reproduce that vision as uncontaminated as we find it in her original plan. This says much about the state of the human being and the obstacles yet to be overcome before we can begin to speak of a Satya Yuga or the establishment of the Truth-Consciousness on Earth. The Mother left a superior ‘instrument’. It was then simply a question of penetrating that organ and listening to the ‘sounds’ it produced. Or else, of taking up that ‘instrument’ and playing upon it the only harmony for which it had been created. And this is what I have done and recorded in the pages of The Gnostic Circle and The New Way, and now in VISHAAL.
Insofar as this cosmic consciousness was the background or founding experience of all art forms in the subcontinent of Vedic origin, traces of this foundation are still discernible. It was this background knowledge which allowed the Mother to ‘see’ and ‘measure’ the chamber in the yogic way she did which resulted in a marvel of sacred geometry and architecture.
But these categories are too limiting and they do not describe the real nature of her achievement. Geometry and architecture are too ‘lifeless’ for our purposes. I have often called the chamber a ‘new model of the universe’. But this too can be lifeless or static. Music, I would submit, is a better category. And even more adequate is the ancient designation, music of the spheres. I have called this work cosmic harmonies precisely in order to add that musical content to the study, without which we would be left with the lifelessness mentioned above. Or else the dry study after Newton of contemporary scientific cosmology, devoid of all vibrancy and pulsating life. In contrast to the new cosmology it is a cosmology devoid of purpose. It is simply mechanical function. Not that in the new cosmology this aspect is underplayed or ignored entirely. It is just that the question of function and mechanism is viewed from a very different perspective. The propelling motor of the universe is seen through another lens. Essential to the evaluation is purpose which in turn is a component of Will, and which in turn arises from that compression of time and the birth of the Point. All of this eludes the scientific cosmologist because it pertains to the process BEFORE that singularity came into being, from which the birth of the material universe in his view then took place via the Big Bang.
Thus, the element common to all these expressions, be it macro or microcosmic, is Time. The drone could never sustain a diversified alignment if Time were not added to the experience by which means that differentiation comes into being. This is then nothing more than the pulsation which arises out of compression of that essential sound-shaft – the drone – according to a particular planetary alignment which then results in the pulse that is the tala of the raga.
For this consolidation of Silence to come about compression is essential, or contraction to a point which is then a ‘seed’. Thereafter, once ‘born’ or germinated, that seed lives on as long as time moves on in its irreversible forward drive. Consequently, if a civilisation comes into being on the basis of just such an experience, just such a yogic process, it is immortal. It is indeed a sanatan dharma, an eternal Truth. Similarly, the ragas are eternal in that they arose from a yogic process of alignment such as the one described in the Rig Veda. Had that alignment not existed, the result would not have been the exquisite inspirations we know today but rather cacophony and perishability.
The point needs to be made regarding renovation of such a system of music that emphasis must lay exclusively on that alignment, otherwise there cannot be a renovation to the same degree as the original inspiration. But, I repeat, it is no longer understood as a re-making or re-inventing. Rather, similar to the Vedic Dharma, the raga also has an in-built mechanism of renewal. This mechanism is the individual, the interpreter, the instrument through which that cosmic inspiration is continuously renewed. Indeed, each time a raga is played in such a condition of being, a renewal is taking place. That is the marvel of the Indian system of music with its cosmic foundation. It is an expression equally founded on an eternal truth, the same truth as the dharma. Therefore, it is simply a question of the individual executor reaching the same heights in the yogic process as the Rishis of old, and renewal is spontaneous.
The problem we experience in this context is that music is no longer a yoga in India – at least to the degree it once was. True, the guru-shishya parampar or teacher-disciple tradition continues and is the basis for the transmission of the art, with a strong colouring of the mystical and yogic. But similar to other areas of Indian civilisation, the true ‘alignment’ was lost. Consequently, though the skeleton of the process exists, it cannot produce the same results. At this point, given the lack of a living exponent of this sort of art, this Vedic expression par excellence, we hear the constant demand voiced for a renewal, or else criticisms of anyone who dares to attempt the introduction of something ‘new’.
These criticisms are often justified because rather than renew we are faced with embellishments, layers, coatings cast on the original. This is easily discernible if we compare the music of North India to that of the South. The former is highly embellished. It is almost comparable to a different architectural style laid upon a temple of old, perhaps an exquisite filigree work in marble, or other such embellishments which represent an entirely different style or culture than the original.
Therefore, it is often that when one’s mood is intensely inward oriented, when the consciousness is compressed to that point where the BONE of the organism is reached, then Hindustani music is found to be insufficient to satisfy a longing for essentials and purity of form. This is only attained through Carnatic music, as the music form of the South is called. Hindustani music of the north tends to pull one outward, by virtue of this embellishment. It is similar to the Taj Mahal with its remarkably beautiful shell, a device that does indeed pin one down to that more external surface of consciousness. Whereas, Carnatic music constantly draws the consciousness within and drives the listener to experience something of that essentiality of old. South India is indeed the preserver of the culture to a remarkable degree.
The ‘Sound’ of Time
If we carry this comparison over to the Shaft of Light in the Mother’s chamber, the same may be said. The Mother’s condition of alignment spontaneously put her ‘in tune’, first of all, with the correct time for the vision to take place. This resulted in a differentiation process in the subsequent Act of Measuring which was identical to the raga in relation to the drone, or the differentiation of the shaft of Silent Sound.
The Act of Measuring is localised in the Core of the chamber at the central base of the room. In the Mother’s vision the measure is, like in the ancient Veda, expressly connected to the Year. This is the Divine Measure or Maya. Our 365-day year is the earth’s synodic revolution, the period during which our planet has made a complete revolution around the Sun and returned approximately to the same location. It is that specific spot in the orbit which is of the utmost importance, that position of the Sun at a particular time located for the collectivity by the calendar. It is called the solar return in astrology, an important element in the art of horoscopic reading. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo also attached considerable importance to the solar return for their disciples as a time of spiritual renewal or re-charging, as it were. For each of us the date of our birth signifies the measure of the solar return. But for the planet, what might that be? That is, what might be considered the date of birth of the Earth herself?
The Earth’s ‘birth’ is the period of the Festival of Light, culminating at the 15th degree of the sign Capricorn, or January 5th/6th in our calendar year. Therefore, I call this 15th degree the soul of India as well as the soul of the Earth. Consequently, in ancient tradition as well as in contemporary Indian society, this period is considered the most auspicious, the most worthy of celebrating when the Sun makes its reappearance in that special zodiacal month. And this same period we find marked off with an astounding exactitude in the Core of the Mother’s chamber, for which reason she could refer to that shaft of light and the globe filled with this light as ‘the symbol of the future realisation’.
Similar to the raga alignment, the Core of the chamber is the element of differentiation. It cuts into the Ray of Light (sound) at a very specific point whereby the 365 days of the year come into being or materialise down the light-shaft but originated or set in motion at the sacred moment of the Festival of Light. Thus, based on the original measurements, the figure 15.20 metres the Mother gave must be somehow ‘equivalent’ to 365 days. And the chamber’s Globe must be so positioned as to mark off at its uppermost portion 21/22 December. When this is achieved a most extraordinary feat of sacred geometry is realised, what I have called the Geometry of Time. Exactly in accordance with the ancient tradition, the 15 days of the Festival are ‘captured’ in the visible portion of the light-filled Globe. Thus, its upper circumference is 21 December, its exact centre is 1st January, and the Pedestal intervenes to interrupt the Ray at the point where the Festival culminates, 5 January, or the upper rim of the Pedestal. Thereafter, the ‘light’ is no longer seen. These 15 days are captured in the Globe because of its diameter, 70cms, to present the seeker with a transcript in architectural form of the most exquisite ‘raga’ of cosmic harmonies the Earth has ever known in this very special hymn to the sacred Festival of Light.
As I wrote in the last VISHAAL, each element in a creation of this order supports every other element. Thus, the 15-step stairway is highlighted in the visible portion of the light-filled Globe by the fact that due to its special geometric properties these 15 steps become 15 days – the 15 days of the Festival of Light. This is further integrated in the lived experience of the room by the fact that the Mother ‘saw’ this phenomenon precisely when the Earth had ‘reached’ the centre of the Globe; and she concluded ‘measuring’ just when the Earth ‘reached’ the top of the Pedestal. That is, the entire process took place within those first five days of the year – a period considered by many ancient civilisations to be ‘out of the calendar’. That was because they were seed days, the most sacred portion of the Festival and the seed from which the entire year was then to evolve. The whole exercise of the Mother’s seeing and measuring culminated over these days with the culmination of the Festival of Light – but according to the true Makar (Capricorn) Sankranti which is 21/22 December.
Harmony or Discord
Let us now turn to the Auroville architect’s rendition of the Mother’s vision, which he and the builders claim is ‘faithful to the original’.
First of all, as already established in the last portion of this study, the architect needlessly eliminated the 15-step entrance directly into the chamber through the floor. The first cacophonous note was sounded, loud and strong. But there were many more to follow.
Instead of respecting the 15.20 metres as the ‘measure of the year’, this measurement was lost by a haphazard placement of the Globe, which in the Auroville construction is called ‘the crystal’. This cacophony, however, merits a very detailed analysis for it concerns this contemporary garbhagriha, the heart and soul of the chamber and the element which therefore demanded the utmost precision of execution to permit it to differentiate the ray/drone so that a superb harmony would arise and not the deplorable cacophony which emanates from the Auroville building.
Two measurements were mentioned for the height of the room: 15.20 metres and 15.50. In The New Way I have given the reasons for these two figures. One pertains to the length of the visible ray from the ceiling as it enters the chamber to the top of the Pedestal. The other is the height of the room, outside the 3-metre garbhagriha area where the Core stands, to the ceiling. But these details were decided respecting the strict precepts of sacred geometry, whereby, utilising one of its most hallowed diagrams, the exact dimensions of the height and width of the Pedestal emerge. This figure is called the Vesica Piscis. With the Globe’s diameter as given by the Mother, the vesica reveals the precise space the Pedestal must occupy beneath the Globe by the space provided when that original circle is duplicated according to the geometric formula of the vesica piscis, with two equal circles of interconnected diameters. The diagram below, taken from The New Way, Volume 2, page 236, makes the process clear.
It can be noted from this diagram, drawn on the basis of the specified 70cms of the Globe’s diameter, that it is this Globe which sets the measure for the chamber’s sacred Core. Everything arises out of this one sphere. All is determined by its properties. Consequently, the Mother made a specific point of emphasising the correct diameter for this all-important item.
Not so clear was the size of the Pedestal. And there was a valid reason for this. In the fluid vision of the first day of her discussion with the secretary-disciple and the architect, 3 January, the Mother mentions an approximate height for the Pedestal. But this was well before the Act of Measuring when she was inspired to give the correct diameter of the Globe, that is, on 10 January. Then out of that the true dimensions of the Pedestal were spontaneously born.
This is entirely in keeping with the knowledge content of the chamber in connection with the Solar Line manifestation, for indeed the Pedestal and its connection with the Fourth, the Son, is born of the Third. By consequence, as a yogic act of seeing, the Pedestal MUST be the direct outcome of the Globe’s dimensions. And this must be fully verifiable on the basis of sacred geometry if in truth we are dealing with a piece of true sacred architecture and in particular one expressing the highest Vedic Seeing and the Supramental Truth. The Mother’s original plan displays this uniqueness and singular characteristic. But not so the architect’s rendition in Auroville. There we find the Pedestal, which has become ‘a stand’, totally out of harmony with the Globe (crystal). There are no geometric relationships between the two. They are entirely disproportionate and disconnected, as the illustration (A) below reveals of the finalised version in Auroville. In the sketch the dotted lines stand for the other symbols, four in all, which form the stand. The crystal is thus perched on the tips of these wrought-iron symbols; the triangles’ lower tips serve as the feet of the stand.
If we leave aside all recondite or esoteric considerations and simply view the above with an eye for aesthetics and harmony of proportions, it is clear that those responsible for the above rendering (A) are deficient even in these basics of architecture and aesthetics. This stand is weak, effete and visually unable to sustain even the empty crystal. Compare it to illustration B of the Core, taken from The New Way, Volume 2, page 238.
Indeed, we return to the question of the EMPTINESS of the Auroville rendition of the Mother’s creation. The transparency of the architect’s crystal indicates emptiness. By consequence and to avoid this result, the Mother specifically requested a TRANSLUCENT and not transparent globe. But insofar as this clear instruction (see TVN 7/3, page 38) was not heeded, the crystal, transparent as it is, conveys emptiness and not fulness. That is, it is a ‘symbol’ entirely opposite in import to all that the Vedic Dharma stands for – not to mention Sri Aurobindo’s supramental message. This, however, was only the first distortion. The next is indeed an outcome of the first.
I have pointed out that the Pedestal is born of the Globe. In the Auroville rendition the stand is as empty as the crystal it supports. Given the fact that we are always dealing with Truth, albeit in the negative, the architect in desiring to create a temple in his own image rather than the Divine’s, and by the special properties of this unique manifestation, could only follow the same ‘law’ in his deliberate falsification of the original. Thus, his ‘stand’ was as linked to his ‘crystal’ as the Mother’s Pedestal was linked to her Globe. The latter reproduces the Cosmic Truth: Fulness and not the Void, the Fourth born of the Third. Whereas, in the architect’s temple we have a display of the shadow of that Cosmic Truth. We have the essence of the Cosmic Ignorance. In a word, a void and empty ‘crystal’ has given birth to an empty and weak ‘stand’.
The architect has expressed the nature of emptiness in the stand again by going contrary to the Mother’s indications and refusing to execute the Pedestal in stone, with Sri Aurobindo’s symbols carved thereupon, on a closed rectangle space of perfect proportions, thoroughly in harmony with and entirely born of the Globe it upholds. Contrarily, he has made the stand of wrought iron, with Sri Aurobindo’s symbols shaped in this metal. Not only is the stand seen as weak given its dimensions which are too small and bear no relation to the size of the crystal, but this see-through wrought iron construction, similar to the transparent crystal, cannot but convey in equal measure the message of Emptiness – ergo, the crux of the Cosmic Ignorance.
In such a rendition, it is impossible for the core of the chamber to capture the essence of the Festival of Light, as indeed it is meant to do. For this, the first prerequisite is a light-filled Globe. Second is an accurately positioned Globe, a placement which can only come into being by the correct height of the Pedestal.
When these prerequisites are fulfilled the result is a core as it figures in The New Way: a light-filled, self-luminous globe, but with a pedestal cutting into that light at a very specific point so that: 1) the Globe ‘consists’ of 15 days – precisely the 15 days of the Festival or 21 December to 5 January, and 2) the descending Ray, of which the Globe is the culmination, is terminated at a particular point in order to establish the divine Measure of the year of 365 days as the temple’s central axis. Thereafter, no further ‘light’ is seen. It is, by that time, compressed. The ‘seed’ is born, the Transcendent has been compressed to this ‘point’. And this is ‘seen’ in the Globe from its centre to the top of the Pedestal, the period of the year – 1 to 5 January – when compression to a ‘seed’ occurs. Thereafter the year unfolds from this magic of gnostic time.
While the descending solar Ray is the 365-day year and its ‘measure’ ends at the top of the Pedestal, or 5th January in calendar time, the operation in the Pedestal is hidden; indeed, following the hallowed tradition of Guha, the Hidden One, Shiva’s son or the 4th. It is an alchemical process very accurately described in the Rigveda, in verses such as those I have already quoted:
‘The young Mother bears the Boy pressed down in her secret being
and gives him not to the Father; but his force is not diminished…
‘…Who is this Boy, O young Mother, whom thou bearest in thyself
when thou are compressed into form, but thy vastness gives him
birth?…’
The third power in the Solar Line is the ‘young Mother’, in contrast to the 6 or the cosmic Divine Mother. The compression of that ‘vastness’ discussed in these hymns is of light/energy, and if we ‘see’ the Globe as this figure, we ‘see’ it as the compressed (contained in this spherical form of special geometric properties) womb wherefrom the Boy (the Fourth) is born, himself ‘compressed’ into form. The Pedestal describes and reveals the rebirth process of Sri Aurobindo, or his passage from Transcendent (9) to Immanent (0/1) or the Son. It is a hidden process, not visible to the eye, for which reason, among others which I will discuss further on, the Pedestal is a closed form. It was undertaken on the other side, as it were, in the subtle dimension. Therefore, it is entirely incorrect to have an OPEN Pedestal as in the Auroville rendition. It contradicts everything the Pedestal represents of the Supramental Manifestation. This alchemical process is hidden because of the nature of the operation and the dimensions to be linked. But it has been known and recorded in the Tradition when we read the alchemical dialogue between Isis and Osiris, ‘One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth.’
That One, the Transcendent Sri Aurobindo, is indeed the same ‘fourth’ of the above dialogue: the One is reborn as the Fourth. Or else there is the Puranic rendition of the same occurrence in the narrations of the birth of Guha, the Hidden One, Shiva’s Son. As such he is the fourth of that special family, brother of Ganesh. It is for this reason that the text states time and again regarding this Son that it is ‘Shiva himself who stands before you’, in the form of the War God. He is the War God because he is Mars, the fourth planet and fourth in the Line. (We shall discuss the role of this planet in the contemporary Indian destiny further on in great detail, for example, with regard to the collapse of sports. Mars is the planet of sports, therefore it is understandable that if an affliction is experienced in its regard, as in the Matrimandir where the Point representative of Mars is left a ‘void’, this same condition will be reflected on an increasing scale in the nation as a whole; much as if a negative ‘horoscope’ had been cemented as the country’s unalterable destiny.)
Succinctly, this is the alchemical operation in the Pedestal. It produces a compressed seed, a compaction of the transcendent vastness whereby its ‘force is not diminished’ by this compression but is only compacted into a golden Seed, Hiranyaretas, as indeed the Vedic Agni is known. And it is this compression to a Point which upholds the universal manifestation as a ‘pillar’. This, in turn, is the pillar of Light, ‘up-pillaring the worlds’. For which reason I have stated that the Mother’s temple is the purest rendition of the Vedic Law that has ever been expressed in architectural form.
On this basis it is evident that having left that Point void in the Auroville rendition, the architect has been a faithful instrument of the Cosmic Ignorance, as I have written earlier. If at all he desired to penetrate the world of the Symbol, as he claims, and make of his creative act something worthwhile, had he entered into the Mother’s consciousness he would not have left that centremost point void but would have fashioned it of solid gold. But this was impossible given the totality of prevailing conditions which, by the miracle of the Laws of Correspondence, has made the construction of the Cosmic Truth an impossibility in Auroville. Given the quality of emptiness of the crystal, given the emptiness of the disproportionate stand, bearing no relation to that crystal, the point beneath the two indeed could only be a void. From the first moment of rejection of the Mother’s original plan in early 1970, and later my own efforts up to 1977, this ‘truth’ was sealed.
The Festival of Saturn, the Time-Spirit
I have given the amount of days ‘contained’ in the solar Ray as 365. Now we must turn our attention to the Pedestal which carries the exercise to even greater heights of Vedic Seeing. The amount of days ‘contained’ in the Pedestal are 13, given its height which is expressly arrived at on the basis of the vesica piscis, or a direct product of the Globe. If we add these 13 to the 365 days of the year (of the Ray and Globe), the total is 378. And these, by a wonder of the Geometry of Time, are directly connected to the Festival of Light, as I shall explain.
Each sign of the zodiac is allotted a planetary ruler in traditional astrology, similar to the days of the week which in most languages, including Sanskrit, are named after one of the planets. The sign Capricorn in which the Festival falls is thus ruled by Saturn. Consequently, this same Festival was known in ancient Rome as the Saturnalia, considering that it fell in Saturn’s period of the year.
If the 365 days of the Ray are the measure of the Earth’s synodic period, or the year, and the Globe is the light-filled 15 days of the Festival, by the extraordinary magical proportions of the Globe, in connection with everything else, we come to a measure of 13 days for the 50cms Pedestal. And by adding them to the rest, the total of 378 days gives us exactly the synodic year of none other than Saturn, ruler of Capricorn and that very period of the Festival of Light. The full measure of the Ray, the Globe and the Pedestal comes to 15.70 metres, from ceiling to bottom of the central axis.
With this exact measurement of the Pedestal, marking off January 5th at the upper rim, Saturn is incorporated in another extraordinary manner by serving as a direct link between the Third and Sri Aurobindo. This involves the position of all-important Saturn, India’s ruler in addition to all the rest, in his natal horoscope.
Saturn in Sri Aurobindo’s horoscope of birth is found precisely at the 15th degree of Capricorn. This of course corresponds to January 5 in our calendar year, and it is the birthday of the Third, through whom his rebirth occurred, and the point of the soul of India. Never has such non-speculative cosmic precision been recorded in an architectural plan.
But without this exact measurement, 15.70, there can be no reproduction of this wondrous Act of Seeing. For never has such a feat been accomplished via sacred geometry and architecture, drawing them utterly out of the realm of the abstract and speculative, the bane of all research on these subjects, and carrying them into the Vedic truth-conscious plane where the symbol is the thing symbolised. At no place on the planet, at any time, in any age has the Act of Seeing reached such awe-inspiring heights. That Consciousness is primarily characterised by UNITY, a vision of harmony and interconnection whereby each thing supports each other thing. The Festival of Light is rendered in architecture not just by the 15-step entrance into the chamber; or the 15 days ‘contained’ in the Globe – exactly 21 December to 5 January; or the time when the Mother ‘saw’ that Core which was exactly in that Festival of Light of 1970. The Pedestal adds the final ingredient to the unified vision of the Truth-Consciousness through Saturn, ruler of the Festival or the Saturnalia, and the measure of that planet’s 378-day synodic year. For this reason I have stated time and again that a pick-and-choose attitude is inadmissible in those pretentious enough to take upon themselves the task of reproducing such a vision as the Mother’s. Yet this has been the attitude of the architect, for which reason nothing of all this remains in his building.
But even in their own superficial field of purely external considerations, of aesthetics, the Mother’s plan incorporates symbols in a way that no contemporary architect can hope to better. The Globe contains the 15 days of the Festival of Light, and it is precisely full of light. It is not transparent. It is light-filled. It does not reflect the images of the builders and architect and all the devotees who visit the chamber, as is presently the case. In the Mother’s vision we have a pristine rendering of the symbol equal to the thing symbolised, and aesthetically, visually that very thing. There are no obtuse, recondite, contrived symbols. There is the Light, where it should be – filling the Globe. There is the closed Pedestal – powerful, capable of concentrating, accumulating the compressed Light from the Globe it supports and upholds. A Pedestal that is able to stand as the Stable Constant, as the Immobile amidst the mobile, as the Divine Will working in the world.
The Ignorance Exposed, or the Logic of Equivalency
At this point, once again we are justified in questioning how, without any adequate credentials qualifying him for the task, the architect was able to gain control over the construction of the Matrimandir and for a long period of 18 years to maintain that absolute and undisputed control, a situation which permitted him to destroy the Mother’s creation while fulfilling, in his own words, his life’s ambition. If there had been no coherent voice opposing his designs and defiance of the divine Writ, no solid and irrefutable body of higher knowledge to challenge his ignorant intrusion in a field entirely beyond his capacity, then we could assume that his act was simply ignorance of the facts and that these once known would have encouraged him to revise his plans, though ignorantia juri non-excusat. But since he was constantly confronted with this Knowledge, and since it had been regularly plagiarised by the powers-that-be in Auroville, this escape via the route of innocent unknowing is closed to him. His actions were deliberate, premeditated and permanently damaging. Given his obstinacy and clinging to darkness rather than the light of reason and higher knowledge, one is forced to draw these conclusions.
Such being the case, we must ask how it is that this secular, commercial architect and his colleagues could have carried out this long construction process and that not one person among the residents of Auroville or in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, or indeed among the disciples and devotees of the Mother anywhere in the world raised their voice, even a feeble one, to bring this usurpation and demolition of the knowledge to a halt. Especially in view of the fact that the campaign for adoption of the original began long before actual construction of the building. (To be fair, I must mention that recently I heard of an attempt made by an intrepid soul in Auroville, an Italian woman, to confront the architect with the fact that ‘the measurements are all wrong’. His reply to this was, ‘Do you think the Divine cares about a few centimetres?’ This reply, it must be noted, was given in spite of the fact that he has the Mother’s own words on record insisting upon the services of an engineer only, and not an architect – precisely to secure the desired ‘precision’ which he has ridiculed, time and again.)
In seeking to find a reason for this general indifference, we must realise that the Matrimandir is a representative model, an isolated fragment of time/consciousness which describes the truth that IS. This means that if these forces were able to gain and maintain their hold over the temple entirely unchallenged, and if the Matrimandir in its essence was to be the field for the reestablishment of the Vedic Dharma and as such represented the real conditions prevailing in India where that Dharma is to be reestablished, then the same defiance and impotence which has been revealed in this sordid episode must be reflected in the greater sphere or the nation as a whole. And indeed, as I have often pointed out, in the very species itself; that is, representative of those flaws in the human consciousness which impede it from reaching a higher rung on the ladder of evolution as a species.
If I have stated that the primary objective of the undermining of the Point was intended to dislodge the soul as ‘pillar’ upholding the Dharma and hence the Indian nation, and if, in turn, that Point is the consolidation of Will, of Agni, and in the shadow-temple this Point has been left void, we understand that this Will itself, on all levels, is effectively absent.
How else to explain, for example, the simple fact that three wars have been fought with Pakistan over Kashmir, directly or indirectly, all of which were WON by India, and yet India did not claim and regain all of Kashmir which had in its entirety joined the union at the time of Independence? Concession upon concession was given to Pakistan, including the return of land won in the last and most victorious war of 1971, as well as 93,000 prisoners of war. Yet nothing of what India had lost was demanded and regained, though this was precisely what had been disputed and fought for. The Shimla Agreement, which was the outcome of the final negotiations between the two countries in 1971, has served mainly to provide an opening for what is now transpiring in Kashmir, it would seem. In addition, Pakistan now has a nuclear weapon to add to the dangerous alchemy.
It is unfortunate to have to state that India, given its policy of non-violence, has lost the capacity to deal with victory. For the undermined Point in the Dharma, related directly as it is to Will, is particularly connected to the Kshatriya segment of the energy base – both individually and collectively. This means that the 20th century policy of non-violence was simply the final blow to that much earlier undermining and the disintegration of the energy base of the three harmonised and mutually-supporting gunas, or qualities, which I have discussed at length in the previous VISHAAL. The segment especially vulnerable was rajas, particularly reflected in the Kshatriya or Warrior capacity in its widest and most comprehensive sense. This includes, for instance, the capacity to rule as well as to wage and win wars, and even to bear defeat.
It is a simple matter to handle defeat. Far more difficult is to be the victor. In India’s case, the policy of non-violence was founded on a severe infliction of guilt brought about by a tremendously powerful inverted will. That is, a negative ploy, a negation. The result is that while it may attain its aim and thus lay claim to a certain success, it is structured negatively. Guilt then corrodes the true will, or Agni of the ancient tradition. It is as if water were continuously poured over the fires (Agni) which an aspiration for wholeness and integrality kindle. The fires are stoked, but they are doused with water just at the moment when that special combustion should occur, that precious energy which the Aryan Warrior strives so nobly and courageously to engender and release as fuel for the rise to the Summit of his or her quest. By consequence, given this undermining, we are left with a shadow of the true will, – that is, no substance, no skambha; or in the Auroville construction, a void central point.
In facing a rajasic character such as we find in the northwestern portion of the Capricorn hieroglyphic geography of India, this substanceless condition is quickly taken advantage of. India has thus faced Pakistan after each war as the victor in name only but not in substance or inner fibre because of its guilt in being ‘violent’. And it goes without saying that this attitude serves in the present to condition India’s response to the open support Pakistan gives to terrorism and secession in both Kashmir and the Punjab, and extending to other parts of the country now. Unless this is understood and, above all, dealt with at the dimension of the ancient roots of the problem, no true and lasting ‘victory’ can come about.
But for this a great courage is required in order to question the unquestionable. The new India has been established on these inverted concepts which serve to drain the nation of the impeccable energy it needs in order to wage and win the war as a true Kshatriya. Its policy has indeed been one of appeasement, as many hold, because this is the only one it knows given the tools at its command for handling these unruly energies let loose upon it over the centuries. The same attitude of appeasement operating within the country at so many levels, often justified on the basis of the ‘wideness’ and ‘tolerance’ of Hinduism, was witnessed in moments when it should have conquered and faced the moment of victory on the basis of a clear knowledge of what exactly it had been fighting for, and therefore as the true Kshatriya, guided by these higher and wider considerations which tradition informs us were the contributions of the sage who stood above the ruler and advised him or her in these intricacies and without whose guidance that impeccable energy could not have been sustained. Not humbled and humiliated because of a fictitious and misguided guilt over the hard-won victory, but rather conscious of the force it was dealing with, the sanctity of the land it was fighting for or defending, and the real strategy to be followed according to the demands of integrality and harmony.
Contemporary Tools of Conquest: The Sacrosanct Hoax
Let us now contrast this with the ancient concept of the Aryan warrior as he comes to us across the ages in the Rigveda. Indeed, it is in the verses of this Veda that the question of compression is discussed in connection with that warrior Son and hence WILL. But just as the undermining affected through guilt the ability to win a war and enjoy the benefits thereof – in the true spirit of the Aryan warrior of old, the Enjoyer – so too has this concept been thoroughly undermined by the interpretation of the Rigveda precisely by western ‘conquerors’. And similar to the ‘conquerors’ of the Mother’s temple who stand unopposed in their destructive mis-rendering, so too has the Rigveda been twisted to serve the invaders. And following the same pattern, there is no voice in the nation, in the corridors where it matters, powerful enough to actually bring this farce to an end. The Indian researcher, no less than the occidental, clings to this misrepresentation as if survival of the nation depended upon the continuance of this hoax. And it is this combination or long accumulation of events and hoaxes which have gone into the destruction of the collective will, rendering the nation impotent in the face of aggressions. I shall provide an example taken directly from the contemporary world of academia.
But let me first make it clear that when I write of the Rigveda as a record of a yogic process and not a text of history, I do not mean that the battles, conquests and victories were ‘symbolic’ in the sense that Mohandas Gandhi sought to interpret the Bhagavad Gita from the Mahabharat, India’s second important epic and moulding force of the consciousness of her people. Gandhi sought to make the text ‘non-violent’. The struggle was thus, in his interpretation, inner, psychological, spiritual. Not a real war, only ‘symbolic’ of the inner and moral struggle of good over evil.
This is not the position I hold regarding either the Gita or the Rigveda. As anyone knows who has experienced this type of yoga, the ‘Aryan warrior’ uses conditions of the real world, the harsh and inescapable realities of life for the purpose of his or her self-perfecting quest. The reason lies in the nature of that ancient quest: it was Earth-oriented, not otherworldly, regardless of the significance attributed to the summit of the ‘journey’, Swar.
The objective was to become the Sun. This meant an alignment similar to the Sun in our solar system which makes of it a true centre – that is, able to ‘hold’, or to hold in orbit of itself numerous planets of diversified expressions. Only a special alignment process would permit this centre to come into being. The Warrior used every condition and circumstance OF LIFE (indeed, in the apt description Sri Aurobindo gave … ‘All life is Yoga’) for this attainment so that Time would become an ally and oblige both positive and negative to serve him in his quest.
Thus, the Rigveda is entirely ‘historical’ in this sense. We must understand those circumscribing conditions which the Aryan used in the way described above. But unless those ‘historic conditions’ are analysed on the backdrop of this special yogic process of alignment, of becoming the Sun, no coherent and truthful understanding of the hymns will be possible and the Rigveda can then be interpreted to serve the devious purposes of invaders and colonisers, as indeed has been the case for the past several hundred years.
To expose the flaws in the ‘historic premise’ and the real purpose for this deliberate misinterpretation, I shall dissect just one text of contemporary academia as a sample to be carried over to every other text of this order, all of which have so heavily coated the mind of the intellectual elite in India, severely hampering the process of national integration.
We shall deal with these ‘historic’ references further on. But first it is necessary to clarify that the ‘symbol’ used in the Vedic context is entirely misleading. Yet this is difficult for the 20th century researcher to understand. The present poise of the human consciousness, in particular in the highly mentally oriented creature, the intellectual of various persuasions, is characterised by an intrinsically dualistic perspective. Consequently, analysis is always undertaken from this separative poise. Thus a chasm exists, a great cleavage whereby Mind casts a cover over the true ‘eye’, exactly as described in the hymns concerning the Aryan struggle to attain the luminous solar Truth-Consciousness. The difficulty is very accurately perceived as a ‘cover’, and the action is epitomised in the character of the serpent Vritra, whose name derives precisely from the root, to cover.
The ancient Rishi knew that given the binary structure of the human being, this ‘cover’ would emerge as fumes or vapours from the chasm of the void for reasons which I have described in Volume 3 of The New Way. Suffice to state for our present purposes that mind, when it stands as regent, as apex in the echelon of consciousness, inflicts this dualistic perception characterised by a separative vision. In the Veda, it is Vritra, the coverer. The goal of the quest is to remove that cover, to thus conquer Vritra. We find this same characteristic figured in a more recent document, in St John’s Revelation or Apocalypse, Chapter 12, as the Red Dragon.
The difficulty a ‘covering’ of this nature imposes is twofold. First, it is the separation which comes into being between ‘the symbol’ and ‘the thing symbolised’. In fact, for the Vedic Seer, ancient and contemporary, there is no ‘symbol’ as we have come to understand the word. There is nothing that stands for something else. Everything reveals the truth that IS, or, in the terms we have often employed, the inherent dharma.
With a perceptive ‘eye’ of this order, it is understandable that Sanskrit, the language of the Veda, should itself demonstrate this exceptional ability to render the symbol the thing symbolised. Indeed, one of its main features is the multiple meaning of words so that the truth of all these levels could be conveyed. As a result we have the cow venerated through the ages because of her function in the above context, as epitomising that many-dimensional truth. Cow, go in Sanskrit, is both the animal and a ray of light, in particular sunlight. It is rare that the animal is experienced as one with the thing symbolised. But it is entirely possible and does sometimes occur in modern India. And the universal property by which this ‘seeing’ comes into being is Time.
I have explained this in some detail in Animals in the Emerging Cosmos TVN 3/4-5-6. From that analysis, or record of seeing, of a lived experience with the cow, her connection with a ray is perfectly clear when that Ray in turn is known to be a certain space of time. That is, the divine Maya comes to our aid and we realise that the gestation of the cow (nine months), when involved with or integrated into a yogic process, such as I have described in ‘Animals in the Emerging Cosmos’, is this sacred space of time which is that luminous Ray (the Golden Rod of western tradition). It forces us to remove the ‘cover’ from our eyes, or, in the proper Vedic expression, from the face of the Sun, and to see the two as one, or the symbol as the thing symbolised. As such, it is no longer a ‘symbol’ as we have come to understand the word, because of which we cannot appreciate what the Vedic Rishi meant by his wild and imaginative exclamations.
The second point I would like to make is the personification technique employed so that the ‘symbol’ might become even more concrete in our yoga and perception of a many-dimensional reality. These, it must be stressed, are condensations or alignments of consciousness. When heavily ‘tilted’ they are hostile or dark inasmuch as these ‘tilts’ do indeed create a ‘covering’. The light is either decreased or increased. The Sun, that ‘eye’ which Vritra covers, is either experienced shadowless, or from a poise of consciousness whereby the Sun is directly overhead and therefore casts no shadows, as in Capricorn, the period of the Cosmic Midday and the Sun’s highest position in the heavens. Or it is fully obscured in the darkness of night as in Cancer, the Cosmic Midnight position of the Sun when the luminary is at the Earth’s nadir. Vritra then personifies that opposite condition to a shadowless perception and existence. Vritra is not a symbol. Vritra is 1) a cosmic/Earth alignment, and 2) a human alignment of consciousness. Vritra is real and not ‘symbolic’ inasmuch as our Earth does indeed ‘experience’ the alignment conspicuous to his nature, and the human being as well. In other words, Vritra is a real problem for the Earth and also for the human creation. Both give life to Vritra. Thus he can be known on many levels: cosmic, societal/civilisational, and individual. What is required for this personification to come about is a condensation around an axis, be this planetary/cosmic or individual. Or else a collective consciousness. Vritra cannot ‘exist’ without these channels, without these conditions.
Similarly, if the human being produces a Vritra-consciousness, it is due to his misalignment whereby perception is ‘tilted’, his axial alignment is such that it resembles the southernmost reach of the Sun at the June (Cancer) Solstice, or else at the midnight nadir and variations thereupon, in contrast to the December (Capricorn) Solstice and the Sun’s midday shadowless luminosity. This means that in order to dissolve the consciousness we call Vritra, it is simply a question of introducing a different alignment, one closer to the Capricorn midday position, and all that this signifies. In other words, a shift from the binary to the unitary system. With this accomplished, Vritra dissolves simply because that off-centre condensation can no longer take place.
Two factors emerge from the above. One is the aid Vritra can be in our quest, our ‘journey’, to use the Vedic term. And this is because Vritra will not disappear as long as the misalignment persists. Thus, for the yogi and true seeker these obstructions, these ‘hostile forces’ – the Lord of Nations is an example in contemporary times, to whom I have referred in the Auroville context – compel us to make a progress. They are truly like shadows pursuing us relentlessly. Wherever we go, we draw this shadow along with us, stuck to us. We cannot escape.
And finally the darkest and most persistent shadow of all is Death. But Death is as illusory as his lesser agents who plague us daily and inescapably. When the species, as a whole, experiences this new alignment as an evolutionary feature, then the final and foremost shadow, Death, will also be dissolved. Then, as a race, for the race, the true and full Satya Yuga or Golden Age of the cosmic midday Capricorn Sun will have manifested. This is what the Festival of Light presages and for which reason it has been a revered segment of time for so many millennia and in many different cultures.
Let us contrast this Vedic perception of reality with the formulations of religions in our 9th Manifestation. All of them attribute an entirely fixed and permanent character to their respective personifications of these shadows. Thus, Satan of the Middle Eastern religions is, like in Vedic times, a personified ‘being’. But the vast difference between this Satan and Vritra, for example, is that while Satan is an eternal antagonist, Vritra’s existence is entirely subject to one’s poise of consciousness. In other words, Vritra is the devil in OUR image. Altering that ‘image’ in a significant way causes Vritra to dissolve. This is also why exact measurements and alignment in a representative cosmically-based edifice such as the Hindu Temple or the Matrimandir are of foremost importance. In a structure of stone, concrete and steel, we are fixing a wrong alignment. That is, we are rendering the Vritra consciousness, or the Lord of Nations, PERMANENT, not dissolvable as in the organic, evolutionary human consciousness which can be transformed at will. This is also why to undo a misalignment, only the services of one knowledgeable of the character of the force captured in the distorted structure can be called in. That is, even demolition, if it is required, must be done knowledgeably.
The other distinguishing feature is that there is only one stable constant in the Vedic perception. It is the Light – or the principle of unity, if you will. But this too merits some elaboration.
In the Veda we have the luminosity of the truth-conscious Sun. Superimposed on this Sun are the ‘covers’ (Vritra) thrown up by our poise vis-à-vis that luminary. The Sun is the stable Truth, the only permanent and unchanging reality of cosmic existence, so beautifully and accurately described in the Rigveda as ‘that which moves and that which moves not’ – for indeed, the Sun is to our solar system fixed and immobile, while to the centre of the galaxy it does indeed move, carrying all its family members with it in a progression ever closer and deeper into that more central Sun. The act of Becoming permits the evolving consciousness to attain an alignment with our luminary in a conscious process – for this is the most important feature of cosmic existence. The Sun of Truth-Consciousness is Satyam, truth and being; but it is only ‘attainable’, rendered ‘audible’, perceived, made conscious through the act of becoming, central to which is Time.
Consequently, the Veda focuses almost entirely on Time. The main ‘axis’ of the hymns is the year, and that is the Cow or Ray, so beautifully rendered in the Mother’s chamber in the pure Vedic imagery of the central Ray of the Sun, an architectural rendering which is the most perfect epitomisation of everything contained in the Vedic universe.
In the course of the year, the truth-conscious Sun was seen and one BECAME the Sun when Vritra and Vala and the Dasyus were conquered, by which means the ‘veils’ covering that Sun were removed and its full glory emerged, enveloped, fashioned the consciousness of the Aryan warrior in its own image – i.e., shadowless. That meant a new alignment whereby the correct axis of consciousness emerged in the Aryan warrior and these cosmic phenomena were refashioned. The Aryan was thus the instrument re-tuned by the Supreme, where upon a new and better harmony was played.
The Eclipse of the Vedic Sun
There have been attempts to understand the Rigveda correctly, many in fact. Foremost is Sri Aurobindo’s rendering. Not only did he seek to understand the real meaning of the hymns, but he used them for his yoga. As his Record of Yoga reveals, which is currently being published in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for the first time, he sought to make of the Rigveda his manual of Yoga. The final results of his endeavours are, of course, not given in the Record. Indeed, if one were to use his Record as a manual, as I am sure many are now attempting, nothing of the Truth-Consciousness would come into being in one’s quest. Sri Aurobindo in those early years was simply cutting a path through the jungle that has come to surround the Veda, similar to the dense tropical jungles which have engulfed the temples and pyramids of Central America, or the sands which covered the Sphinx at Giza, and which, interestingly, were removed in 1926, precisely the year when Sri Aurobindo had completed that very phase of his long and laborious Yoga. Surely Vritra, in the evolutionary progression of consciousness, had been dealt many blows by his hard labour.
But that was only the first phase. Thereafter he entered another which culminated in his passing, for which he employed the Vedic technique of compression in order to emerge as the Point, the ‘son of the White Mother’, whose ‘womb’ in turn is compressed in order to allow for HIS compression and return as the 4th, the Son, the Point or Agni; or else, as the 10th in the Puranic line, Kalki. New, realigned axis and navel of the world.
In order for a sadhak to follow Sri Aurobindo along the path he opened, he would have to live the above ‘death’ by extreme compression consciously. Yet this is not necessary. The purpose of Sri Aurobindo’s laborious, painstaking early phase of yoga, detailed minutely in his Record, was simply to cut through that jungle and open the path to what Time has covered over in thick and dense veils – Time, or the serpent Vritra who for the misaligned is the Determinator, the Compeller, but for the realigned is the Instrument, the Ally. To prove the point of his quest in this regard, we have Sri Aurobindo’s own words when he received psychically a list of 9 yogic attainments which he was to strive for; the 9th referred to Time: ‘Time must no longer be determinative, but only an instrumental factor in the siddhi (realisation or power).’ (A&R, Vol. 13, No. 2, Dec.1989)
He understood that the Rigvedic process would ultimately produce instrumental Time, the greatest ally in our quest, as individuals, as a civilisation, as a species. The path he hewed through the jungle is opened. There is no need to labour over the details he has already worked out. Or the Mother, for that matter. Indeed, we move ahead in time and with the aid of time; and in the Mother’s plan of the Vedic chamber, we discover each and every conquest they made and the unveiled supramental sun-ray which we can attain instantly by aligning our vision to that midday Sun.
This, of course, is easier said than done, as the fiasco of the Matrimandir construction in Auroville demonstrates, where every choice the architects and builders made in the effort, supposedly, to reproduce the Mother’s vision, produced the opposite, its shadow. For our race is still a misaligned phenomenon. Cover upon cover cloud our vision, and they seem to increase rather than diminish, as the architecture of the shadow-temple proves. Or else there is the work of academics, the western and even the oriental Indologists who continue to serve Vritra rather than the truth or even true scholarship.
Let me provide an example, for which I must again refer to A.L. Basham’s compilation A Cultural History of India, a series of articles by prominent scholars, each of whom has specialised in a different area of Indian history. His book is especially interesting for our purposes, hence I refer to it occasionally, because he has selected material from the foremost exponents of the different theories pertaining to Indian history, from Vedic times to the present. And it is a recent enough publication (1975) to serve our purposes insofar as from the time of its publication, not much progress has been made in the corridors of Indology regarding the Rigveda. Thus, we can quote portions of this 1975 publication and safely assume that no further light has been thrown on the matter. Indeed, I shall now provide an example of just how efficient a scholar can be as an agent of Vritra, as a tool for creating further layers or covers to obscure the Sun. What I shall quote will reveal that in terms of the Rigveda at least, it is no longer a veil, or a series of veils. It is a total solar eclipse.
This is what Dr. T. Burrow, professor of Sanskrit and Fellow of Balliol College at Oxford has to say about those enigmatic Aryans, our forefathers on the path to the midday supramental Sun. I have enumerated some of the points he makes as follows:
1) ‘…So far we have had to rely entirely on linguistic relationships to account for the origin and early movements of the Aryans’… (A Cultural History of India, page 23)
Let me begin by reminding the reader that the accepted and undisputed fact of history, by occidentals and orientals alike, is that the Aryans invaded the northern portion of the subcontinent around 1500 BC. This is truly indisputable now. There is no evidence of any contrary theory or hope of a substantial revision of the postulation. In discussing this matter in depth, basing our analysis on Prof. Burrow’s arguments, I believe the results will be rather surprising and perhaps shocking when we come to realise how utterly limited is the academic mind when it approaches an investigation involving a consciousness which perceives ‘the symbol as the thing symbolised’.
Thus Prof. Burrow explicitly states that the Indologist has relied exclusively on linguistics or the ‘science’ of philology to arrive at the above conclusion. In the light of what I have written concerning the special quality of the language Burrow has treated in his investigation, we have to question what his line of approach has been. It is of fundamental importance, for as he himself has pointed out, scholars have had to rely entirely on ‘linguistic relationships’ to reach the conclusion that the Aryans invaded the subcontinent and through a series of battles with the tribes they encountered, gradually came to displace them and establish their Vedic culture throughout the whole of North India. In his paper, Burrow’s statement are conspicuous for their contrived flavour, the doubts they cast on the motives for the conclusions he reaches, and finally just plain ignorance of certain essentials, without a knowledge of which the Rigveda can never be understood. I base this assessment on his inability – similar to that of any academic – to deal with that language on its own terms rather than the terms the ‘Enlightenment’ has imposed on these ancient and sacred things.
In countless verses there is mention of a city, or cities, as for example, ‘…They have called to him, getting wide knowledge, they guard sleeplessly the strength, they have entered the strong city…’. Professor Burrow considers such references to be conclusive proof of an Aryan invasion and the destruction of the Indus Valley civilisation’s cities. He writes,
2) ‘The evidence of the Vedic texts themselves is decidedly in favour of the former view, notably on account of the frequent references to the destruction of cities, the war-god Indra being known as puramdara, “destroyer of cities”. Agni, the fire-god is also prominently mentioned in this capacity, understandably, since many of the Indus cities appear to have been destroyed by fire. In view of these repeated references the conclusion seems inescapable that the destruction of the Indus cities was the work of the Aryans.’ (Ibid, page 25.)
One has to make every effort to be charitable in reading the above. But unbelievably this is the stuff our academic world is fed on, and feeds others, namely our children who depend on such research in their formative years for the fashioning of their outlook. In addition, the prison is constructed of such material and devised on such a plan that none can break out while still aspiring to a place in the sun of academia.
Each scholar is obliged by an accepted methodology to build on what other scholars have already published and the research already done. To secure a doctorate it is obligatory that a list of references be included of sources from which the aspirant has taken material for his or her own construction. That is, it is a new ‘wing’ in a building of already well-established foundations. And any further work on the Vedic civilisation, for example, cannot be accepted unless it is simply an addition to the already well-established foundation of the philologists who have preceded Professor Burrow. He is permitted to differ, but never to step out of the edifice. In other words, the prison is the method, not even the conclusion. It is to be noted that one of the greatest successes of the Lord of Nations has been the strictures placed upon the human consciousness whereby only mental formations, formulations, speculations, are accepted as valid specimens of the scientific methodology. The result is that research can never be liberated from the existing edifice the duality of mind imposes.
By consequence, scholars such as Burrow are trapped in a consciousness which can never SEE the symbol as the thing symbolised. As a result, he makes statements which, for one who does see, are almost ludicrous, – i.e., that since Indus valley cities were destroyed by fire and since Agni of the ‘Aryans’ was a fire-god, and he is referred to as a ‘destroyer of cities’, we are driven to the ‘inescapable conclusion’ that the Aryan warriors did indeed bring to an end the Indus valley civilisation. This, of course, ‘proves’ that they came AFTER that civilisation, or around 1500 BC.
In view of the role of Agni in the yogic process of the Rigveda, the Point, the axis, the compression, and so forth, so clearly explained in the text, not as ‘symbols’ but as the truth that IS, Burrow’s conclusion is indeed astounding. Yet, and here is the rub, these conclusions based on the accepted methodology of academia, are the stuff of which the whole edifice of the origins of Indian culture are formed. And if this were not enough, they are the ‘conclusions’ which have eased the conscience of both the Islamic invaders and the British colonisers. (In fact, Burrow often refers to the Aryans as ‘colonisers’.) They are indeed the conclusions which lie at the root of the two-nation theory which in turn gave rise to a partitioned India in this century. Thus, the consequences of this sort of inane deductive process are far-reaching and have greatly maimed the fledgling Indian nation.
I have stated in earlier portions of this study that the purpose of the Indologist’s emphasis on the invasion theory is to consolidate a Euro-centric world view. This is entirely borne out by Burrow, in no uncertain terms. To illustrate, let me pass on to another of his remarkable statements:
3) ‘The Aryans, whose presence in north-western India is documented by the Rigveda, had reached the territory they occupied through a migration, or rather, a succession of migrations, from outside the Indian subcontinent. The final stage of this migration cannot have been very far removed from the beginning of the composition of the Rigveda, but, at the same time, a sufficient period of time must have elapsed for any clear recollection of it to have disappeared, since the hymns contain no certain references to such an event. The Aryan invasion of India is recorded in no written document, and it cannot yet be traced archeologically, but it is nevertheless firmly established as a historical fact on the basis of comparative philology.’ (Ibid, page 20, italics mine.)
We are informed by the learned professor that this alleged ‘migration’ is an established historical fact, though there exists no evidence other than the Rigveda, wherein there is no mention of this ‘fact’ – which, considering that it meant the displacement of an entire civilisation, ought to have merited some mention in the only record they left of their culture. Further, he claims, the evidence available is the study of language – but a language whose depth is far too deep for these researchers who are like fish out of water when the real ‘language’ emerges of which Sanskrit was the perfect channel given its singular capacity to integrate the symbol and the thing symbolised. That language of the Rigveda is the cosmic notation as the foundation for a yogic process which relived the creative act in micro/macrocosm. This is the purpose of the Earth’s existence at the third position in this solar system. It is the planet whereupon this cosmic realignment can take place. The saga of the ‘Aryan’ speaks of nothing else. Unless Sanskrit is seen as a channel for that knowledge, obviously the only ‘conclusion’ which can be drawn from a scrutiny of the hymns is that their composers were babbling idiots. But not entirely, because there is another aspect of the charade which has to be borne in mind. Again I refer to the Euro-centric imperative. Implied in this is a Europe awaiting salvation, hence ‘pagan’ at the time of the Aryan ‘separation’ from this single domicile in Europe, which branch of the family then moved eastward. The ‘proof’ of this eastward march is entirely linguistic, there is no other.
Interestingly, even the scholar has to admit that a sensational historical fact of this nature, fashioner of an entire civilisation and culture – persisting still today – is nowhere mentioned in the only text the contemporary Indologist and philologist have used to ‘conclusively’ prove that the Aryans came from outside and invaded the subcontinent in ‘successive migrations’, none of which are mentioned anywhere. This is the stuff our academic ‘truths’ and ‘established facts’ are made of. Quite simply, no greater scholastic hoax has ever been perpetrated on a civilisation, and on the whole world. And surely there is no other race like the Indian, and the Hindu, which so easily, happily, willingly, accepted this hoax and continues to make use of it as a model for the fashioning of the new India as a sort of cultural syncretism. To achieve the latter, with all its sinister overtones which we shall explore in depth, the first imperative was to secure as ‘established history’ this fictitious migration from the West of this Aryan race described in the Veda.
The above theory is an illusion. It has no scientific basis – and I am using the term within the walls of their own edifice. With neither archaeological evidence or any clear written reference to this migration, we can only marvel at the gullibility of the human being and the Hindu in particular which caused him to rally around that ‘theory’ and make of it the foundation for his divided world. Partition was one result, and will continue to be the result in an endless stream, for the aim is the total destruction of the Vedic perception as a fashioning principle of the ‘new world order’ and to posit in this central void space the divisive nature of a mentally-oriented binary creation, the cradle of which is Europe. Hence Sri Aurobindo in his 76th Aphorism wrote,
‘Europe prides herself on her practical and scientific organisation and efficiency. I am waiting till her organisation is perfect, then, a child shall destroy her.’
This aphorism – that is, Sri Aurobindo’s record of a prophetic seeing – is playing itself out today. The ‘organisation’ is indeed perfect; for, as I have written above, none can break out of the edifice. The ‘scientific’ method for accepted truths which alone are permitted to fashion our thinking, our world, our civilisation, is that organisation Sri Aurobindo refers to. And yet, he writes ‘…a child shall destroy her’.
This is Sri Aurobindo himself born as the Child, the Son or Agni, or the singularity of a perfect centre. When that comes into being, as it already has, that ‘organisation’ is doomed. The new creation is on its way, bringing with it ‘all things made new’.
Seeds of the Third Reich
Regarding the question of usurpation and returning to the theme of the Euro-centred Aryan as the source of all that India has given to the world, history does indeed inform us of the extremes reached in this falsification process. The shadow-concept threw up its finest instrument in Adolph Hitler and his Nazi regime. There we encounter the full-blown Euro-centred Aryan theory. Hitler was a most logical, coherent outcome of the work done by 19th century revered Indologists, some of the best known of whom were German, it may be added. Hitler did not even seek to camouflage his message, his usurpation. He called his race the true Aryan. He adopted the sacred Vedic Swastik as his symbol; he even drew in the carrier or vahana, to use the Vedic term, of the Vishnu Avatar, the Eagle, which perhaps more forcefully than any other symbol or emblem drove home the message of an imperialistic supremacy which Hitler sought to convey. He was indeed the most faithful tool of Vritra as the Lord of Nations the world has ever known. But what I wish to convey is that Europe cannot absolve itself of its responsibility in the events which led up to, surrounded and followed the Third Reich. The falsification of the Aryan/Vedic truth is a root cause for the emergence of a Hitler, or the consciousness that this perversion reveals. And in that almost the whole world participated. For indeed, Vritra, lord and master of the Third Reich, is common to all misaligned human beings. Similarly, a new alignment can dissolve the Hitlers or the Vritra agents. Provided that one sees. Professor Burrow does help us to see. He writes,
4) ‘A frequent misconception which should be mentioned arises from the misuse of the term Aryan. This name can be applied properly only to the Indo-Iranians, since it was the name they used to designate themselves. Its use should not be extended to apply to the Indo-Europeans in general, as has too frequently been done. The result of this extension of usage has been a confusion, which is often encountered, between the early Aryans and the primitive Indo-Europeans. As a result the Russian and Central Asian steppes, which were the habitat of the Aryans, i.e. the Indo-Aryans, in the period preceding the migration to India, etc., that is to say for an unspecified, but no doubt considerable period before about 1500 B.C., have often been regarded as the home of the original Indo-Europeans. The result has been that Greeks, Hittites, etc., are represented as migrating from this region at a time when only the Aryan branch of the Indo-Europeans was in occupation of it. On the contrary the evidence is that the European branches of the Indo-European family are native to Europe, and that after separating from them the Aryans extended to the east. As already observed, during this period, between their separation from the other Indo-Europeans and the later migration beginning about 1500 B.C., the characteristic features of their civilisation were evolved.’ (Ibid, pages 24-25, italics mine.)
This is of course an astounding confirmation of occidental scholarship obsessed with proving itself the cradle of everything, even the pagan babblings of those early Aryans who, in turn, were obsessed with only one thing: the destruction of cities, their inhabitants and civilisation and the smattering of tribes which put up any resistance to their ‘colonisation’ – Burrow’s own term. He emphasises this ‘eastward’ direction throughout his article, pushing the Aryan origin via a sleuthing through the languages of the peoples of Iran, Central Asia and Europe, ‘…still further to the west’. And finally we have his remarkable statement (4) to the effect that the real origin was Europe wherefrom the branch of Aryans who finally landed up in the subcontinent had broken off.
I must mention the fact that I am using the term Aryan as Burrow has done simply in order to facilitate this dissecting process. In India this civilisation has never been known as Aryan, except in the corridors of academia. Vedic is the true and only designation, as the term is used in the Rigveda itself: Knowledge. A civilisation founded on the principle of Knowledge. Certainly this was a unique phenomenon and clearly could not fit into the historian’s image of a pagan band of warlike migrants destroying everything they found in their path. Aryan, as any sensible reading of the text will reveal, is the term used for the warrior who attains that coveted ‘sun of knowledge’, who realigns his consciousness according to the process described in the text, to ‘become the sun’.
It ought to be self-evident, but I shall nevertheless mention the fact, that so massive a migration, as even Burrow has to admit it must have been for an entire civilisation to be transported from one location to another and to displace completely the already considerable development it met in India, finds no mention in the Rigveda. Yet scholars seem to agree that the hymns were created AFTER the migration and after destruction of the Indus cities. Yet we find nothing to attest to this massive movement and action. In this light, given the fact that no historian, archaeologist or philologist could break out of the ‘Enlightenment’ prison, it is understandable that even a nationalist of the calibre and intensity of purpose of B.C. Tilak should have tied himself in linguistic/geographic knots to somehow find traces of this migration, or invasion, from the West. On several occasions I have referred to Tilak’s interpretation of the Rigvedic references to a six-month night as being, according to him, an indication of not a Central Asian but an Arctic origin for the Aryans. Yet so thoroughly has the real language of the hymns been lost sight of that no one has linked the reference to its true meaning and connection with the uttarayana and dakshinayana, or the two hemispheres, north and south, into which we divide the year as if it were a 24-hour period with six ‘months’ of day and six ‘months’ of night. Once again this disclosure must be a further undermining of the migration theory. But above and beyond, it indicates where to look, how to approach the language of the Gods, Sanskrit, in which the Rigveda was composed. In so doing, it becomes evident that it is not language itself that is the barrier but one’s poise of consciousness – a poise which no longer permits us to appreciate that the symbol is the thing symbolised. In this view we are forced to observe that Burrow’s conclusions about the indisputable evidence in the hymns of the Aryan destruction of the Indus cities is equally flawed. For what is the symbol-meaning of the city in such a ‘language’?
The Mother has provided a contemporary indication by the fact that she had originally used her 12-part symbol as the basis for the city’s plan. And when we know that her symbol is cosmically-founded and displays the divine Measure of the year, then we begin to understand in what way the Vedic Rishis used the term. Alignment of such a city is paramount. (This is borne out by many ancient cultures, including the Roman.) The destruction of a city when it is carried out by Indra or Agni or any of the Gods refers to that misaligned form.
It is rather surprising to observe that Burrow and his colleagues have forgotten that there are numerous references to the ‘city’ even in Middle-Eastern Scripture. Indeed, the Revelation, last book of the Christian New Testament, culminates with the glorious descent ‘from heaven’ of the City. It is not even necessary to tax one’s imagination to appreciate that St John’s city is a cosmic symbol. (See The Hidden Manna, Chapters 21 and 22.) We find this same symbol in almost every myth, scripture, or culture of the ancient world. And yet in dealing with the Rigveda, Burrow simply will not consider this symbolism in its true character and persists in reading into the lines the ‘inescapable conclusion’ that the Aryans invaded and destroyed the Indus cities.
And why? There is no archaeological evidence of the existence of the Indus civilisation. And via Carbon-14 dating scholars are confident that they have located the civilisation in its proper time-map, – i.e., in the second millennium. This is convenient because if we can then provide certain ‘inescapable conclusions’ from the Rigveda that the Aryans destroyed those cities, then we are justified in positing Vedic civilisation in a much later time frame, – i.e., at a time which can fortify the Euro-centric fortress. And this is precisely what the western Indologist has done and the Indian academic, scientist, intellectual and artist have applauded and upheld. For how can it be otherwise? Scholarship in India is founded on that edifice of the Enlightenment. No thinker or artist in the India of today can break out of this prison. His or her scholarship is obliged to respect the ‘tested’ methodology the enlightened mind of the West has produced. And it is precisely that methodology, so revered and so ‘proven’, that is flawed, terribly flawed. No doubt for this reason the Mother, when asked to name the first school of her city, called it Last School.
This is not because, as another trick of the Lord of Nations, the yogic methodology is unacceptable because it is a subjective experience which cannot be duplicated in a laboratory, bearing respect for certain strict parameters. For even if it could be so tested and measured, this would not be the answer we seek. The contemporary yogi is as misguided as the scientist, and he displays this in ample measure when he attempts to apply the methodology of the Enlightenment to his area of discovery. None of this will carry us closer to a true understanding of the Rigveda. It is only the new cosmology which can do so, on the basis of its language and its sound and empirical methodology of the instrumentation of gnostic time.
According to the new cosmology, the Aryan invasion never took place. Or if it did it was in such a remote cosmic age that it left no traces and any attempt to locate the mother civilisation is futile. And indeed, objectively we must admit that the evidence, or entire lack of it, is precisely the clearest indication that Vedic civilisation was born in a very distant past. That is, evidence of such a massive migration simply does not exist. We have only one thing to hold as representative of that ‘Aryan migration’ and it is the Rigveda wherein no mention is made of the ‘fact’!
Then again, what is the scholar really looking for? If it is evidence of a subcontinental origin of the race that has inhabited the Indian landmass uninterruptedly throughout the millennia, the ‘proof’ lies in the race which still occupies the same land, whose culture still exists, whose civilisation has still maintained its distinguishable features in spite of true historic invasions of the past 1200 years, lost measures, and any number of shadow-covers accumulated along the way. In this light, we begin to ferret out the real utility of the invasion theory. It is to convince Hindus that whatever has gone into the composition of their essence and being and civilisation is not native born. It came from outside. And if it did so in the remote past, the Hindu cannot lay exclusive claim to the land. It is, as history has proven, up for grabs, as the saying goes. In this area of his deductions, the real contradictions emerge in Professor Burrow’s theorising:
5) ‘…The culture which we find in the Rigveda was not developed in India, but, in most essentials, imported already formed, from outside.’ (Ibid, page 24.)
Before proceeding, given its compactness, directness, indisputable tone of authority, I submit that this statement should be engraved on the walls of each and every institute of lower and higher learning in modern India, for it encapsulates and succinctly reveals exactly the quality of the foundations supporting the contemporary Indian nation.
Having stated this, let me proceed with Burrow’s contention to reveal its many contradictions. He believes, along with other scholars, that the Rigveda was composed considerably AFTER the alleged migratory phase of Vedic civilisation because there is no reference to this massive migration or displacement of an entire culture and its people in the text. Yet we are perplexed by this fact to note that of the period during which this transmigration took place, there is no evidence of such. And the Rigveda itself is of no use in that it simply describes the imported culture already formed. Yet, according to Burrow, it was penned long after the migration, so long after that this displacement of the civilisation was forgotten and not even mentioned in the one text that faithfully conveys, in its entirety, the contours of that outside Aryan nation.
It is reasonable to question how such pieces in Burrow’s jigsaw puzzle can be expected to fit into place and provide a true and undistorted picture of the real ‘facts’. The philological material collected to support the invasion/migration theory is questionable. The following will elucidate the reason for the questions it raises:
6) ‘The Aryan invasion of India is recorded in no written document, and it cannot yet be traced archaeologically, but it is nonetheless firmly established as a historical fact on the basis of comparative philology. The Indo-European languages, of which Sanskrit in its Vedic form is one of the oldest members, originated in Europe [italics mine], and the only possible way by which a language belonging to this family could be carried all the way to India was a migration of the people speaking it…’ (Ibid, page 21.)
On the basis of this authoritative statement, we have to assume there is sound proof that the direction of the migration which lay at the bottom of this ‘mutual relationship of the languages concerned’, was from Europe, the alleged place of its inception, eastward until finally it reached North India.
I contest this assumption, for it cannot be called anything else. Given the fact that the science of language cannot lay its hands on the single origin of language, just as anthropologists cannot be sure where or when man first took shape more or less in the form we know today, there can be no solid and irrefutable evidence to prove that Sanskrit had its origins in Europe, – that is, in the west and not the east. Into this argument comes the necessity to shorten by millennia the civilisation in question. Yet the dishonesty is revealed when the Rigveda is perversely misread and the proper links are not established between the Veda and contemporary Indian civilisation. A colossal unknown hangs over India, as far as western scholarship is concerned. There are no historical records nor any archaeological evidence to fill the gap and ease the discomfort these unknowns must necessarily give rise to. There is only the Rigveda, and given its inscrutable language and imagery, it has become a convenient tool to further the Euro-centric concept and obsession.
The logical deduction from the available evidence, and in this I include all the research done on the Iranian civilisation with its clear links to the Vedic which Burrow and others have established, is that the origin of all this was India. From the subcontinent the language and culture fanned out and spread to many parts of the world, not only to Europe.
Regarding the Iranian civilisation and certain elements found in Zoroastrianism which are similar to the Vedic culture, it is clear that we are dealing with an off-shoot of the Vedic Dharma and not the reverse; or not one of the twin branches which simultaneously broke off from the European matrix, as Burrow would have us believe.
It is evident that we are dealing here with a form of topsy-turviness, nowhere better imaged than in the upside-down reflections in the crystal of the shadow-temple. This perverse and falsifying consciousness insists on standing truth on its head. It resists all and any attempt to be convinced that the distortion arises from an initial wrong positioning whereby Europe is the centre. Great leaps of imagination must be taken to sustain this premise; or else colossal misrepresentations must be nurtured and constantly re-nurtured in order to carry on with the hoax and bolster the premise irrespective of the incongruities that arise. But if we wish to discover the true foundations and the real centre, from where the movement fans out, we need only refer to the original floor plan of the Mother’s chamber (see the New Way, Volume 2). Therein all is in place. The lens is focused and the images are ‘faithful and true’, in the words of St John’s Apocalypse.
It is interesting to note that certain esoteric societies which have fostered not only this Eurocentrism but also the platform of a united Europe, hold the date, 17 January, as particularly meaningful in the fulfilment of these aspirations. And it is interesting to note that this was the last date when the Mother dealt with the distortions of the architects. The period of her endeavours covered 18 days – 31 December 1969 to 17 January 1970. I have referred to the connection between the two in VISHAAL, 5/6, February 1991.
Cheating Truth and Time
We must turn now to the question of culture and the various connections to be found between the Vedic civilisation, the Iranian, or even the Roman at a later date. But this is not culture as we understand it today. The elements of the Veda which surface in those regions west of the Indus pertain to a system of higher knowledge which was the real and only content of the Rigveda. This is not to say that we are not permitted to search for certain facts of the routine life of the Vedic Seer through the hymns, or to understand therefrom the character of his or her ancient world. It is clear that in composing the hymns, the Seers utilised or drew from the experiences of his or her known world. And in that context the Rigveda is ‘historic’. But if we extract only this from the text or do not accept that these images are secondary to the real content, then of course we are not in a position to formulate any theory as to the conditions prevailing in India in those former times.
In fact, to be honest, what is the aim of the Indologist and philologist? It has been mainly to establish an inescapable historic fact that the culture which we still find in the subcontinent today is an import. In addition, and we shall return to Burrow once again for the ‘authoritative’ word on this, the Vedic culture as it comes through to us in the Rigveda, indicates in no uncertain terms a civilisation at its peak. There is no evidence at all of a seeking after knowledge of a method of yoga. It is done, it is the unchallenged backdrop or foundation of the hymns. This is maintained by other perceptive scholars, such as Jeanine Miller in her The Vedas (B.I. Publications, New Delhi), ‘…All these Rigvedic and Atharvavedic references contain in more than germ the doctrine of sheaths and subtler levels of later ages. Passing references without explanation would rather point to a body of doctrine already well established…’ (page 140).
In this sense we may view the Rigveda itself as a sort of raga whose drone-axis is this Vedic ecliptical foundation, the central shaft of which is, of course, the OM. It is a base which has never left India and can be traced uninterruptedly to a remote pre-Judeo-Christian era. Consequently, there is no archaeological evidence of a determined period, because there are simply layers upon layers of a constant development of the indigenous civilisation. Burrow goes to great lengths to establish the fact that the migrations into India were undertaken by one of the two main branches of the ‘Proto-Indo-Aryans’ whom he localises in their advanced stage of development in Eurasia. However, he is insistent that this too was merely an off-shoot of ‘a location still further to the west’, – i.e., in Europe.
There can be no doubt that not only elements of Sanskrit are found in languages west of India but, more especially, there are clear transports of the Vedic Gods. This is especially to be noted in the Mittani kingdom of the Middle East, where, as Burrow points out, some of the principal Vedic deities appear in the annals of their cultural life entirely uncamouflaged. And then of course there is the worship of Mithra in Iran which is indisputably the Vedic God Mitra.
But from this evidence Burrow and his colleagues derive numerous assumptions. In fact, the whole of the Aryan migration theory is based exclusively on ‘assumptions’ reached through the ‘evidence’ the various languages provide. That is, there are common words, common deities even, – ergo, there was a common mother culture, fully developed and situated in the steppes of Central Asia which sent migratory hordes into North India in the second millennium before Christ, as well as into Iran at the same time, and also to the Mittani kingdom. And this mother civilisation, in turn, was an off-shoot of a civilisation ‘still further to the west’.
There is a point to note in these assumptions. We find in India still today the full expression of the Vedic culture. That is, the full progression through the millennia in an unbroken line of the same, single civilisation which we call Vedic and the philologist and Indologist calls Aryan. He does so because to him the Rigveda is a document relating the conquests of these Aryans, as they are often described in the Hymns. But this alone is sufficient to reveal that these scholars have not at all grasped the real content of the Rigveda and have thus conjured up an assumed civilisation called Aryan on the basis of ‘evidence’ found therein, disregarding in the process the most important clue to the text in the very name veda, from the root to see, to know (witness the Italian vedere = to see) – that is, knowledge. In other words, a civilisation not known as ‘Aryan’, but Vedic, or founded on the higher knowledge established in the hymns themselves. If this is not grasped, how can anything true emerge? We shall deal with aspects of this problem further on. Here I wish to question the ‘assumption’ that the civilisation which became established in Iran and India about the same time, according to the philologist, are derivations from one source located in the steppes of Central Asia.
For the fact is, where is that formidable mother civilisation today, or any clear evidence of its existence as we find abundantly in India regarding the Vedic culture? The Rigveda, whatever its date of composition, is central to all Hinduism and its off-shoots, whatever the angle they may expound of the original Idea. It is the seed for the entire civilisation. Burrow has to admit that this evidence indicates a well-established culture, but to him it was IMPORTED, whole and complete into India at the same time is was supposed to have moved into Iran. But one must persist in asking what the evidence of the existence of so formidable a mother civilisation might be? According to Burrow the evidence is purely ‘linguistic relationships’. In these areas still today there are traces of the same language, or languages. The assumption is therefore, automatically, that the origin of these languages and civilisations is Central Asia. Again we must ask, Why? And we are entitled to demand more conclusive proof that such was indeed the case. For linguistic evidence does not reveal the DIRECTION of the spreading influence. It does not tell us conclusively that Sanskrit came to India from the west, or even that the countless elements of Sanskrit which we find in languages to the west of India originated in the subcontinent. These conclusions can only be arrived at upon establishing which civilisation and which culture came into existence first. If this can be conclusively proven, then it is safe to ‘assume’ that Sanskrit evolved from the mother culture at some remote period and that this was ‘imported’ whole and entire into India.
It stands to reason, in light of the above, that the date established as the beginning of the civilisation, or in this case, the importation, has to be later than what might be conclusively proven as the beginning of the civilisations philologists hold as ancestors of the Vedic. This is the key feature of the hoax, and it is for this reason that such great pains are taken to find support for the contention that the Indus civilisation was pre-Vedic, or that the Vedic Gods did not make their way from India to Iran and elsewhere inasmuch as the dates of the Iranian developments are more easily verifiable. The Vedic therefore must be linked to them and held as a more or less simultaneous happening.
Yet, I repeat, Burrow ties himself in many contradictory knots to sustain the assumptions. He writes, with regard to the expansion of the phantom civilisation, mother of all the rest,
7) ‘…To account for the later vast expansion, we must assume that favourable climatic and other conditions had led to a continuous increase of population…’ (Ibid, page 24.)
And on the basis of this grand assumption which we must take to mean an over-population that encouraged such ‘vast expansion’, he continues,
‘…Only on this basis can we account for their ability to colonise such extensive areas in Iran and north India…” (Ibid).
Dissecting the above reveals rather unsound innards. The entire postulation thus hinges on a series of such ‘assumptions’ for which no other proof is offered other than ‘linguistic relationships’. Does evidence of similar sounds or words tell us in any way that climate was favourable in Europe and Central Asia in the second millennium to produce a population explosion serious enough to encourage a migration and to conquer and ‘colonise’ (Burrow’s expression throughout) a vast area? And further, if that mother civilisation existed, where are traces in that zone, be these archaeological or otherwise, cultural or religious?
Yet we do find traces of a spiritual expansion of the Vedic Gods as far west as Rome, according to Burrow, via the Mithraic cult which we know so heavily influenced early Christianity to the extent that it is believed the birthdate of Jesus was fixed as and when it was in order to draw worshippers from the cult into the folds of the new creed by this strategy of adopting a date sacred to Mithra – i.e., the Festival of Light. (Even today Christianity adopts a similar strategy in a black, brown or yellow Jesus.) We find this Festival, the Saturnalia, well established in Rome, as I have pointed out earlier.
The point is, if we understand the knowledge content of the Rigveda and its cosmological foundation, it is evident that this assumed ‘imported’ culture is of a very high order and surpasses anything we may encounter in the Middle East and certainly in Europe and Central Asia. Regarding the latter, there is no evidence that in the second and third millennia anything of this order existed. Yet we have contemporary India itself as evidence of the uninterrupted evolution of the society from a civilisation as highly evolved as is depicted in the Rigveda, into the Upanishadic period, the Puranic, and then the true period of conquests from abroad and the evident decline. The Rigveda expresses this culmination, an attainment in terms of depth of perception and cosmic awareness and knowledge thereof which is not equalled elsewhere, especially in terms of written language. Sanskrit of the period was, and still is, a language perfectly fashioned to serve as a vehicle for those higher perceptions and reflective of a consciousness of unity. Indeed, the Rigveda provides the indisputable proof that the civilisation it stands for had only one obsession: the attainment of Swar, or the Truth-Conscious world of the supramental Sun. Not even the ancient Egyptians were as obsessed with the Divine. It is an obsession which, in spite of the extreme materialism prevalent in the character of the contemporary Indian, is still the axis of the nation.
The Zodiac as a Guideline
I have referred time and again to the zodiacal content of the Rigveda, especially its relation to yoga or a transformative process, very much akin to what we know as alchemy in the west. Most remarkable of all is the Capricorn hieroglyph superimposed on the geography of the subcontinent which not only indicates the complete borders of the nation but provides valuable knowledge regarding the character of the inhabitants of those areas via the energy flows, or gunas (qualities) which describe the particular area the tri-part hieroglyph covers. No one has yet furnished conclusive proof of the origin of the zodiacal symbols. What we do know is that as an instrument of knowledge the concept – the division of the ecliptic so as to mirror the human condition and through the calendar to regulate the life of a diversified collectivity, as well as to describe an evolutionary ‘purpose’ – has been found central to almost every ancient culture. The actual symbols may vary but the concept is the same.
Regarding the twelve of the zodiac we use today, there is no unanimity as to their place of origin. Scholars posit this origin in Mesopotamia simply because they have found written and sculptural evidence. But none that states: The zodiac hieroglyphs were born HERE, and not THERE. It is also quite possible that they later RE-ENTERED India via that route.
My point is that if we wish to carry out an investigation into the origins of Vedic civilisation, it would be far more intelligent to seek for origins in a system such as the zodiacal which covers a multitude of fields, revealing as well the cosmic awareness of the civilisation and its orientation.
Regarding the Vedic culture as presented in the Rigveda, the striking feature is that zodiacal wisdom comes through the hymns as a web of 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 civilisation for which the hymns were composed. As Miller mentions…‘a body of doctrine already well established’. 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 in its knowledge content and its relation to the transformation of consciousness both individual and collective, but nonetheless still operating and influencing contemporary Indian society precisely because of the blanket assumption and a civilisation which arose from that original content. As an example, we may take the importance given to the lower and higher hemispheres of the ecliptic, uttaryana and dakshinayana and the signs Capricorn and Cancer, their respective ‘axes’; and these, in turn, mark off the periods of the Sun’s farthest equatorial reaches north and south.
The Rigveda does not provide any information by which we can locate the origin of this special knowledge. But the manner in which it is used in the hymns does provide evidence of a civilisation long in possession of the wisdom the zodiac grants and of a civilisation structured according to that wisdom – i.e., the caste system devised on a certain division of the ecliptic into four parts, personified as the Cosmic Purush or Agni Vaiswanara. When these are brought up in the hymns, no background is provided. The four castes flow through the verses freely and easily; or Vishnu in his connection with the four zodiacal signs of Preservation: the Bull, the Lion, the Eagle and the Friend. This indicates a knowledge tested and accepted by the entire civilisation and firmly rooted in the culture. It is this sort of evidence we wish to find in the areas Burrow and his fellow philologists consider to be the cradle of that Vedic wisdom and culture.
Even in Iran, which they hold as a sort of twin in the development of the ‘Aryan’ civilisation, the knowledge I refer to is not found in as pure a degree as in India, nor is it of such a high philosophical and mystical quality, then and now. Moreover, if there is any indication that a culture is an import, it is to be found in the fact that at a certain point it is dislodged and replaced by another. Its roots are weak precisely because the culture or belief had no real foundation in the soil into which it was transplanted. In the effort to secure a germination, given this ‘biological’ imperative or the natural process of rejection of a transplanted organ by the body, invaders have invariably adopted elements of the indigenous culture to assist in the assimilation and to coerce, as it were, the population into accepting the transplant. The result is that a certain shallowness pervades such cultures in view of the fact that processes are truncated or prematurely aborted. In its place another foetus is posited which, in its own turn, is again aborted, and so on. There are numerous examples of this in the ancient world. One of which I have mentioned above being the borrowings of Christianity from the Mithraic cult in order to secure a foothold in the psyche of the people of the area. Or else there are the aborted developments of the civilisations of the Americas, or the Middle East and northern Africa. But when a civilisation has very deep roots – the ancient Egyptian, for instance, or even the Graeco-Roman – in order to install something else, a long period of decline must preface the new establishment. The civilisation slowly disintegrates, caves in on itself. Then the invasion can take place and the new ‘organ’ is accepted. The civilisation is weakened, exhausted and cannot offer any resistance.
India gives evidence of a tremendously well-rooted edifice unlike anything witnessed in the ancient world around the time of the alleged ‘Aryan migration’ (1500 BC). And if this culture was indeed an import, whole and entire, as Burrow and most others in the academic field and the Indian intelligentsia sustain, then we are faced with an unprecedented sociological phenomenon of a most unusual order. That is, a psychic affinity between the peoples of the mother civilisation, wherever and whoever they may be, so great, so complete, that the transplant never provoked any known rejection. On the contrary. The invaders who did succeed in establishing their empires in the subcontinent ultimately, where the Vedic civilisation was still found whole and entire (as it was supposed to have been at the time of the alleged migrations), were never able either to dislodge and eliminate the indigenous culture, nor were they able to secure a dilution by means of an interpenetration of beliefs. This, of course, is largely due to its total incompatibility with the new faiths of the Medieval and contemporary invaders which are fundamentally different from Hinduism and as such cannot be amalgamated. If at all any success has attended these efforts, it was during the British rule and the subtle infiltration, mainly via the educational system, to undermine Hinduism through concepts of ‘the Enlightenment’.
A civilisation which has persisted for so many millennia must clearly experience a very extended period of decline in order to weaken its roots and finally to bring the immense tree to the ground and replace it with another variety, another species. The age of decline, if it may be so called, is in a sense temporally proportionate to the depth of the roots. By consequence, it does indeed cause us concern when we realise that India is at a civilisational crossroads, a nadir in the process of decline of a development extended over vast stretches of time.
What appears to irritate Eurocentrists the most is precisely the indisputable continuity of the Vedic civilisation and its survival more or less intact, largely on the basis of a transmission of knowledge through the Guru/Disciple tradition and the practice of yogas of various hues. This tradition did not start at the time of the Rigveda. It preceded the hymns by innumerable generations. It was there from the time the first Rishi observed that the cosmos mirrored the human condition and the evolution – as above, so below. And, as pointed out, this concept was present long before the actual penning of the hymns.
Thus, if these hymns do not give evidence of any migration, or a succession of migrations, yet they do reveal the cosmological knowledge the Rishi possessed and utilised as a process of yoga fully detailed and by consequence the structure of his entire civilisation, it boggles the mind to consider that a hoax such as the Aryan migration theory was so easily accepted by Indians during the British rule. Indeed, this is the successful undermining I referred to earlier. But if it was possible, and still has a firm hold today over the nation’s mind, in particular that of the intellectual elite, it is only because centuries earlier the Will or Point was so effectively undermined that invaders thereafter were able to move into the subcontinent and occupy it almost entirely. This decline in the spiritual fibre of the nations finds no better reflection than in the visualisation before our mind’s eye, drawn up from the annals of history, of foreign forces demolishing thousands of temples while the indigenous population stands by meekly and observes the destruction. Indeed, apart from Kashmir where, it seems, the tactic continues, it is now almost impossible to imagine that such events did indeed take place. At the same time, the intelligentsia, fashioned according to the undermining principles of the Raj, will go to any extremes to obstruct Hindus from demolishing even one mosque and constructing a temple to Lord Ram on the site, a mosque which, in any case, long ceased to be one insofar as there is a Hindu idol installed therein which must necessarily, in the purist’s interpretation, be considered a pollution of the zone. Therefore, the unwillingness to concede the space to Hindus, and especially in consideration of the long history of reverse demolitions, is perplexing. That is, as long as we do not take into consideration the ‘enlightenment’ the British brought into India which makes such acts appear unsecular, intolerant, fundamentalist and even fascistic. But what of the fascistic notion of a Euro-centred Aryanism, exported into ancient India?
In all of this I have not mentioned the role of the South as a fundamental component of Vedic civilisation. If we equate the latter with ‘Aryan’ – i.e., rulers or conquerors of the North – ,then there can be no place for the Dravidian in that civilisation. Or else, as Burrow interprets the matter, that those Aryans were obsessed with war and their main objective was to conquer the Dasyu tribes which they considered to be their arch enemies. And if we go a step further and we equate those Dasyus with the southern Dravidians, then we have a perfect tool to divide and rule, and even after that rule collapses, to go on dividing. But this interpretation, held so widely, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Rigveda and is simply the result of a Euro-centrist perversion.
At the same time, it is interesting to note how little importance is given in scholarly works to the ancient Tamil literary works, especially those which, I am told, describe the great flood and the submergence of the continent believed to be Lemuria, from where the Tamils arose and then established their kingdom in Madurai. Even the Greeks bear witness to the ancient tradition in that the Dravidian land was called by them Limyrike, or else Damirica, clearly connecting the inhabitants with the legendary Lemuria. And this is corroborated by the local tradition of the various Sangams, the first and oldest of which records events of some 30,000 years ago.
If at all a common source of knowledge is to be sought, which fed both north and south of the subcontinent, I believe this is where it is to be found. And of course, there will be no evidence but in the corpus of Vedic/Hindu cultural expressions and the philosophical and spiritual/yogic practices which have been feeding this civilisation from time immemorial. And who is the custodian of that knowledge, that tradition? It is only the Vedic Seer – or one who sees. Which proves the point I made earlier in this study that, unlike Egypt which utilised colossi in stone to preserve the Knowledge in times of decline, conquest and subjugation, India used the consciousness of her people uninterruptedly throughout the millennia.
July of 1992
Aeon Centre of Cosmology
at Skambha
(to be continued)