In the 1960s the Mother, realizing the grave peril that existed if India was forced by circumstances to manufacture nuclear weapons, expressed her concern in the following:

‘The particular view of evolution which I here present will bring out some significant facts. The first phase of evolution was of matter and on this Earth, for millions of years, elements of matter were in great conflict with each other, each one trying, as it were, to suppress or obtain dominance over the others. This process was necessary so that the primary fury of these forces could be expended and by mutual destruction or subservience the substance of the Earth as a whole be tamed and made a more fit place to receive the next phase of evolution, that of life or the vital principle.

‘When this force of life arrived, settled, and grew over the centuries, again great conflicts developed between the numerous species, arising first out of the need for their very existence and then for aggrandisement and domination. Again by this act of Nature in inflaming the species against each other, the most ferocious ones were destroyed or sufficiently subdued so that the next phase of evolution could arrive and survive.

‘When reason descended into the animal, the chosen creature was much inferior physically and vitally compared to some of the other species. But yet, both on account of the power of the new instrument of reason and because the furies of the other species had been somewhat lessened, primitive man survived and grew and ultimately established dominance over the rest of creation.

‘Now the process is repeating itself. The forces brought up by reason have not only advanced man to a very superior position, but are also working towards a mutual self-destruction so that a fourth phase of evolution can safely arrive and be established and grow.

‘This, as I have said, is the pattern of the procedure followed so far in the evolutionary movement. But it is not necessarily the only method. Man, by the correct use of his reason, inspired and enriched by the higher knowledge already descending in the new phase of evolution, can prevent the great destruction and even actively collaborate in the descent. This is the opportunity now presenting itself and it is left to be seen if man will rise to meet it or allow the old process to repeat and allow himself to be almost annihilated. We have come to the crisis of decision.

‘There have been many such crises in man’s history, but all relatively minor ones, yet growing in intensity and preparing for the great final one which we now face.

‘If we can now see this fact, let us next see how we can prevent the holocaust and even, as I have said, collaborate in the evolutionary leap that is preparing.

‘It is clear that the atom bomb and other nuclear weapons are ultimate instruments of almost global destruction. Can we prevent them being used and how?

‘The key to this new phase of evolution lies in India. This may seem strange when one considers that in many respects India lags behind other countries – but nevertheless it is a fact. The consideration that the new phase [of evolution] will act more in the spirit than in the mind may help one in understanding how India is destined to lead the world on its new path. By that token, it is in India therefore that the destructive process will begin, if the old pattern is to be followed. A little reflection should make this clear to anyone. Hence the manufacture of the atom bomb by India assumes great significance for the whole world and not for India alone. No matter which other countries, or how many of them, make the bomb – there is good chance that human reason with some enlightenment, may refrain from using it. But if India makes the bomb, then there is no chance at all. By this very act the formation that has been built up for preventing the Pralaya and which particularly protects India will be broken. Then the Bomb will be used, widely used – and it will no longer be a question of India defending itself from attack, but of the survival of the whole human race.

‘That India is in this position is not by our choice. It is so ordained by the process of evolution itself. And for this purpose there is a special dispensation working in India, that shapes its ends and has preserved its integrity through all vicissitudes.’

I propose to comment extensively on the Mother’s observations primarily because that ‘crisis of decision’ which she describes has arrived. When the Mother spoke of this matter there was little to make one suspect or believe that the central role she was attributing to India could in any way be true. Especially in what concerns nuclear weapons. India did not have this nuclear potential then. But just six months after the Mother’s passing, on 18 May, 1974, India exploded a nuclear device. The Mother’s vision was beginning to prove itself true.

That ‘explosion for peaceful purposes’, as it was called, thrust me into a state of dismay. I was aware of the Mother’s injunction concerning the fact that manufacturing the bomb would break an occult protection India was under. For this reason the possibility that it could actually come to pass caused me the deepest concern.

My distress at that time was heightened because I had just then begun to have very clear perceptions of India’s place in the new Creation and her central and dynamic role in the Supramental Age. Therefore, did the Mother’s injunction and the fact that India had indeed acquired that dreaded nuclear potential mean that all was lost, that everything that I had seen regarding the nation’s unique destiny was erased by this one act?

My concern went very deep because at the time this experiment in nuclear technology took place I was in the midst of writing The Gnostic Circle. Knowledge was descending in a steady stream as a result of the continuous flow of yogic experiences; the main foundations of the New Way were right then being laid in which India was central. Was it all to be cast to the winds because of this new course India seemed to be embarking upon?

I knew that the Mother’s seeing was accurate; it contained ‘the Power of the Word’. There was no doubt of it. But I also knew that my vision of an invincible destiny for India was equally true. The new knowledge that was descending and which I was recording right then in The Gnostic Circle confirmed this ultimate apotheosis in which India stood as the central figure in a new world order, in the new dispensation of the Supermind. How then to reconcile these two positions?

The Mother was stating that if India produced the bomb she would be central to the greatest holocaust the Earth has known. And what seemed to be merely a possibility and entirely in the realm of speculation, had now become a reality. That ‘possibility’ became a fact of the nation’s destiny on 18 May, 1974.

But still the ultimate play-out was far off. There was no immediate danger; the crisis appeared to be as yet far away. However, in matters of higher Knowledge and Seeing one is trained to look into the ‘seed’ of things, of events, and in this act to perceive what is but what has not yet unfolded in the inevitable course that that seed determines. Knowing this, realising that 1974 marked a decisive and perilous turning point for India and the world, I prayed fervently to the Divine Mother for guidance. My prayer consisted in this plea: the Supreme should send me a ‘sign’, a clear and unmistakable one that what I was seeing of India’s destiny would hold, that the nation would be victorious in realizing her destiny, her unity above all, which was crucial not only for her own survival but for the entire Earth, and by consequence for the Supramental Creation. I had seen India to be ‘the soul of the Earth’ within the symphony of nations. I prayed ardently for a ‘sign’ that this soul-essence would establish itself, that all that I was then seeing was indeed true. Foremost was the ultimate victory of Truth and the establishment of the new Creation first on Indian soil.

Within a few days of this fervent prayer I did indeed receive ‘a sign’ – and it was unmistakable in its significance. It was, in fact, a sign that I alone, perhaps more than anyone else, could understand. It was the Capricorn hieroglyph superimposed upon the geography of India, in an exact correspondence.

The features of this sign can only be understood properly by those who know exactly what Capricorn indicates in the harmony of the twelve zodiacal signs. Astrologers from the most ancient times have unanimously considered Capricorn to be India’s ruling sign. But no one, to my knowledge, had ever seen that this hieroglyph actually delineates India’s physical boundaries. But of course it is an India whole and intact, as she was before the devastation of Partition. This too was a profound verification: India’s true form is delineated by the hieroglyph of the zodiacal sign that is her ruler. That glyph in ancient tradition is called the Name of God, this I knew; but I also knew that everything I had been seeing concerning India’s central position as the Earth’s ‘soul’ is contained in the inner and esoteric experience of Capricorn. In that secret dimension its real mystery was disclosed, its deepest truths. And with this answer to my prayer the Supreme had not only confirmed a vision in a way that could only be understood by someone initiated into the secrets of Capricorn, but the sign itself would be a potent tool ever after in the work I was to do for India.

Thus with this ‘sign’, the deeply meaningful answer to my prayer, I considered that whatever was to happen India would be saved, the Earth would be saved, and the things contained in the Capricorn symbol would come to pass regardless of the ‘decisions’ men take.

This conviction was tested two years later. But with this subsequent test once again Knowledge poured into me to confirm the facts seen of the country’s invincible destiny. Always the Capricorn hieroglyph was at the root of the perceptions. When this ‘sign’ had been given to me it was as though a seal and sanction had been set upon this work and that Seal would be the everlasting ‘philosopher’s stone’ as it were. With it I would always have an element of objective knowledge to verify what my yogic experiences were revealing.

This being the case, in March of 1976 once more a decisive breakthrough was made and the question of India’s central role, even in the case of a destruction, came up. This time the breakthrough involved the Mother’s Chamber. An unparalleled yogic realization disclosed the deepest meaning in the discrepancies between what was indicated in the measurements and design of the original plan the Mother gave of the Chamber, where the destiny of the Earth and India is written, and the revised plan of the builders of the temple in Auroville. Not only did those discrepancies indicate the destruction India might have to face, but they revealed to me the imminent and conclusive split between the Ashram and Auroville, a rift that soon thereafter came about and remains total to this day.

Yet the most crucial aspect of this breakthrough revealed that there was every likelihood of a very great destruction on Earth. But whatever this would be, one thing was certain: India would somehow be central to the matter; it would be played out in or through India.

In 1976 this still seemed remote and not immediately preoccupying. Yet today, as Pakistan realises its aim of manufacturing nuclear weapons, we are witnesses to the fact that India has indeed reached that ‘crisis of decision’ the Mother warned of two decades ago.

In my vision of 1976 one thing more was made clearer than ever before: the Supramental Creation was a fact, the only real reality of the Earth’s future. But in what way would it be established on this planet which is its destined home? We are all aware, as the Mother stated, that destruction this time assumes a new meaning, given the nature of the weapons that are to be used for this purpose. It may now mean total annihilation. Where then would that leave the Supramental Creation?

I would like to use the Capricorn hieroglyph for this timely discussion because it does indeed hold the key to both India’s destiny and the entire planet’s future in terms of the realisation of this high goal. Let us then analyse the condition in India today of the knowledge this symbol holds. A number of very revealing facts will emerge and these will help us to understand the true position which is of vital concern to us all. As in the question of the Mother’s Chamber and the builder’s distortion of its measurements, the following will reveal that India too, centuries ago, ‘lost the measure’. Consequently, connected as these two events are, we may conclude that the loss of the Temple’s Measure was determined more than a thousand years ago.

It was a very coherent development that led to this degeneration, stretching over more than a thousand years. During the Dark Ages two concurrent movements began in India, both of which portended an ominous future for the country. One was the decisive rise and predominance of the Mayavadist school of thought and the organisation initiated by Shankara, the great philosopher and yogi of Medieval India, of Hinduism as a religion with the seeds of Illusionism at its heart. This reformation, forced upon Hinduism by the vigorous rise of Buddhism and its attack on the most central aspects of the Sanatan Dharma, was the first indication that trouble lay ahead. The consequences of the predominance of Mayavadist thought and its influence on the spiritual and cultural fabric of the nation were destined to play themselves out in the centuries to follow, long after Shankara had left the scene. This was the turning point for India, when ‘otherworldliness’ became the favoured poise in contrast to the earlier Vedic position of a quest and realisation that was Earth-oriented. Indeed, it was then that the ‘secret of the Veda’ was lost. It was then that a corrosion began in the perceptive faculties of Indian wisemen and the highest truth the Earth has known, captured in the earliest hymns of those sublime Vedic Seers became progressively more hidden from the seeker behind impenetrable veils. The Veda was then distorted to accommodate the Mayavadist ideal by interpretations that cast it into the mould of a largely ritualistic function; and at that point India began increasingly to lose touch with matter and the Earth’s purpose as a home of an evolving species, and hence with her own true destiny. In a related development she began to succumb to invasions from beyond her borders, the consequences of which she is still experiencing, the destabilising effects of which she is yet to conquer.

There was another development around the same period which proves more conclusively and objectively that India lost the Divine Measure describing her soul’s truth, that Vedic ‘divine Maya’. This Vedic truth was the Measure of the Year, Earthly and Cosmic, as the distinction is made in cosmology. It may seem absurd to state that the simple measure of 365 days could be ‘lost’, but let me explain what exactly I mean by losing the Measure of the Year in this context. The Measure’s inner truth was lost, and its power – above all its power, its potential as a transformative tool. In the way that India is still contending with the consequences of Mayavadism and the ‘illusion of the world’, she is still today contending with the consequences of having lost the Measure of the Year.

How did this come to pass? The details of this development are revealingly coherent. In the Dark Ages the split began in India – as elsewhere – between astrology and astronomy. Until then they were indisputably one. But from that point onward astronomy began to exert itself as a science, separate from its mother-source. Astronomy became concerned exclusively with mechanics, with measure for measure’s sake, divorced from the inner truth and purpose of the physical manifestation. And at that point the Vedic divine Maya (or Measure) was lost. Maya was no longer ‘divine’ and by consequence everything that was measurable was nothing but ‘an illusion’. This became the ‘truth’ of material creation in which its divine attributes were then concealed from the human perceptive faculties.

With this division between astrology and astronomy the latter became the dominant force, as it is today throughout the world. The truth of astrology as a body of knowledge could only be verified on the basis of yogic experience, whereas the other depended solely on the physical senses and the ability to verify what they perceived by mechanical means. Astrology’s truth was accessible to very few, and as ‘science’ imposed itself men and women of knowledge increasingly had to occult their light when confronted with the unenlightened systems of measurement based on entirely divisive perceptive faculties and the instruments these gave birth to. Science easily subjugated the more elusive truths of the spirit and the soul, and as a consequence the Measure of the Year was corrupted. Those seeds of corruption continue to work in India today.

Let me be more specific. Astronomy of the Middle Ages established the measure of the year with its 0 degree Aries starting point as rooted in the backdrop of the Constellations… This became the ‘fixed point’ and the basis for determining the beginning of the 12-month year in calendar reckoning. That is, the constellational circle, which could be seen and measured in the sky, was to be thereafter the one that would determine where and when the zodiacal wheel would begin and by consequence when the calendar year would start and the remaining twelve months would follow.

From astrology’s dawn, which I have good reason to believe took place in pre-historic India, there have always been two circles in the heavens to which the Earth is related in her orbit of the Sun. One is the circumscribing sphere of the constellations of fixed stars. Our planet requires 25,920 Earth years to experience passage within this full circle. The other is the tropical zodiacal circle. This consists of a band extending as a plane from the Sun a certain number of degrees on either side. Within this plane the planets are situated and revolve around the Sun in their orbits. In this band the Earth takes 365 days to complete a full orbit of the Sun. Her movements on her axis in relation to this plane give us the equinoxes and the solstices, and hence the seasons. Thus the tropical zodiac begins with the March equinox each year, on a fixed date that is determined by the Earth’s alignment in this plane that extends from the Sun. It is, therefore, a measure that the Earth receives directly from her relation to the Sun, to her source of energy and light. Further on I will discuss the importance and relevance of the constellational sphere.

In a sense the obsession with the constellational starting point was reasonable. At the time this system of measurement came into vogue the two circles, the zodiacal and the constellational, coincided. That is, the beginning of Aries of that larger, visible sphere was observed to be in line with the point on the eastern horizon, toward the end of March when the Sun is seen to cross the Equator. Thus, some 2000 years ago these two points were aligned. But it was observed that thereafter they began to move apart. Indeed, in 72 years they were one full degree apart, and each subsequent interval of 72 years brought them a further degree away from each other. The two points were clearly distancing themselves; before long, there was a distinctly measurable discrepancy between the two. But the tropical zodiac’s starting point always occurs on 21/22 March, regardless of where the constellational point is. It is a circle whole in itself and does not require the ‘support’ of the constellational backdrop. It is determined by the Earth’s rotation on her axis and around the Sun. It produces the seasons we know and is wedded to our measure of a 24-hour day. As a species we are wholly involved with this measure. In a sense we could say that we have it engrained in each cell of our bodies.

The other more distant constellational sphere has a different function and significance in cosmology. It is this circle that determines the passage of the astrological ages. Similar to the ascendant in an individual’s astrological chart, the measure this circle provides is akin to the Earth’s ascendant in her ‘horoscope’. When we say we are in the Aquarian Age we mean that the constellational 0 starting point has shifted thirty degrees (in a backward motion) to the sign Aquarius. This is called the Precession of the Equinoxes, implying that the way we determine this passage is related to the equinoctial alignment that has shifted. There is no clear consensus on the direct cause of this slow gyration the Earth experiences to produce this precessional movement.

I do not wish to make this discussion too technical, but I must provide a certain background information if any sense is to be made of the consequences these developments have brought about. For in fact what was the outcome of these observations in those remote days of history?

The ‘scientific’ observer imposed the results of his observations on the wisemen of the day and insisted that the constellational point marked the true beginning of the year, that the year’s commencement should always be wedded to this point, regardless of what was happening on Earth, regardless of the seasons, and so forth. If this point was seen to shift in the sky, then the March equinox would also have to shift. Thus 72 years after the coincidence of the two points the Equinox of March, normally celebrated on 22 March each year when the Sun is seen to cross the Equator, was celebrated a day later. And this progression increased with each passage of 72 years. The relation is approximately 72 years for an Earth day. Thus, the start of the zodiac and the year for Hindus today is no longer coincidental with Aries of the tropical zodiac. It is 23 degree/days later. In practical terms this means that a person born on January 1st is not considered a native of the sign Capricorn by an Indian astrologer, insofar as Capricorn, according to this reckoning, must be considered to begin only on 15 January since the constellational starting point has moved away from its equatorial correspondence by this amount of time and celestial arc.

At this point I am obliged to state that any moderately competent astrologer can verify that this is entirely unacceptable and inaccurate in questions concerning the character reading of a native of the sign. In my own experience, earlier as a practising astrologer and now concerned with the more precise work of evolving a new cosmology, it is ludicrous to maintain that the constellational shifting 0 point must hold for creatures born on this planet and that their zodiacal homes are not to be determined by the Earth’s measure relative to the Sun’s position and located in our year of 365 days, but rather by this remote shift of the Precession of the Equinoxes. The latter gives us an important measure – the astrological ages. With this we can determine what the greater age of the Earth is, stretched through a cycle of 25,920 years and more. But that is all. For the other we must use the circle of the twelve zodiacal signs/months, which begins each year on the same day, a fixed point in our calendar demarcation of time. Failing to do this the ultimate result is, for example, that a harvest festival will very soon fall in the middle of winter, a spring rite in the thick of summer, and so on. This is precisely what is happening in India now; before long it will be a total confusion. This is the result when such matters are determined by men who are concerned exclusively with measure for measure’s sake and have lost sight of what it is they are actually measuring, what its function really is. Discernment has been completely lost and the consequences of this error accumulate with each passing year.

A factor of additional importance concerns the question of exactly when these two points were aligned. This has never been clearly established and decided upon by astrologers. We are dealing with relationships between ‘occult’ circles, really speaking, and hence it has never been accurately determined. The revelation of that zero starting point was one of the most significant happenings in my work and laid the basis for a precision that had been unattainable without this date. It disclosed that the Aquarian Age began in 1926. But India, based on the corrupt measure, considers that the Age of Aquarius is still 500 years away!

I know of no better means than this to explain certain problems India faces in coming to terms with her high destiny. Wisemen in India believe that this significant shift to Aquarius lies far into the future; not to speak of a related development: that wretched bane hanging over the nation’s destiny called the Kali Yuga! These erroneous ideas have conditioned the consciousness of the people significantly. We observe that India is being propelled into the new Age in spite of herself. She clings to the idea that Pisces, the Age we have already left, is still the truth of her destiny, regardless of what the rest of the world believes. Thus, in many aspects of her collective life, she refuses to accept change, to go along with the pull of a new future that awaits her and that is wholly described by the shift to Aquarius. The rest of the world moves forward, largely in harmony with Time; whereas India, a nation that alone among the nations of the world, respects time and astrological wisdom, is caught in the incongruous position of being ‘out of tune with time’!

For this much must be said: India is the only country in the world where zodiacal wisdom is a consistent and decisive moulding force in the nation’s religious and cultural experience. But it is distorted. The effects of this distortion are far-reaching. Therefore, let us examine them, and let us use for this purpose India’s own sacred sign and hieroglyph, Capricorn.

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Thea
Skambha August of 1987