Examples of a Truncated Formula:

Applications of the New Cosmology

Thea (PNB) ©
20-21 August 2009

I would like to provide a somewhat different perspective to the campaign we are presently engaged in to counteract the propaganda machine of the agents of the Status Quo. The problem of the preponderance of the Ignorance has to be understood through the very ‘formula’ Supermind requires for its deployment. There are four integers in the formula. Three are given in Sri Aurobindo’s symbol itself. So, in a sense this is not my revelation but his and the Mother’s since we know that she designed their symbols.

If the Law of Three has been cited by Robert, it is not enough to give a list of when and where this Law has been used or referred to in the past to the present. We need to provide living examples of its necessity applied to our work as well as this on-going discussion. To that end there is no better example than the condition of the two ‘fields’ Sri Aurobindo and the Mother established which most assume were meant to be the official representatives of their joint mission, entrusted with the task of carrying their work forward into the future. Given that the formula has been rejected in these representative ‘fields’ and that the Third Factor (or integer) has been excluded, of course there is no such formula to apply as taken from his own official symbol. This should suffice to convince any observer that there is ‘trouble in paradise!’

The result of this exclusion is that we are left with the Old Way, the dual formulation of reality – He and She, or Purusha and Prakriti. What is lacking in this arrangement is the power of impulsion, or renovation, or a forward drive. Or else, to borrow from the Puranas, we have Shiva lost in meditation of the transcendent heights from where he refuses to descend. To save the Earth Brahma concedes to send Parvati in order to draw him back to Earth and engage in its very special Lila. She brings the Formula to the mix, in the form of the three gunas. Thus the Earth was saved because out of their dalliance was born the Son-Conqueror who defeats the mighty Tarakasura [see Secrets of the Earth, Part 8]. In every Age of Vishnu the hostile force that must be dealt with will always be an agent of the status quo since every appearance of Vishnu’s emanations introduces a new level of consciousness and a progress up the ladder of evolution. Thus, it necessarily stands that the third ‘integer’ and its representative will be the most combated, because without that Third there is no dynamism.
A system saddled with duality as the basis of its perception of reality cannot experience dynamism; and there is one certainty of the Supramental Manifestation: its dynamic quality, for even the experience of Peace in the practice of the Integral Yoga must be dynamic. In his Letters on Yoga, Sri Aurobindo has made this clear time and again. I need not labour the point further. But I will continue to discuss the living examples of what occurs when that dynamism is absent, the essence of the Third Principle. Without the Law of Three stagnation is predictable and unavoidable. Lamentably, this is the condition of both the Ashram and Auroville. They have been engulfed in stagnation due to rejection of the very Formula Sri Aurobindo himself laid down. In fact, Auroville’s membership has not increased for three decades; a township that was meant to house 50,000 has barely 2000.

In a further application which involves both Sri Aurobindo’s mission and the Sanatana Dharma (indeed they cannot be separated), we find the three gunas which describe the same process conveyed in the 9/6/3 of Sri Aurobindo’s symbol. These are the cosmic properties required for the expression and manifestation of that Dharma. Elimination of any one of them is unthinkable for the very fact that if the Dharma is ‘eternal’, sanatana, it must bear the Law of Three and be structured accordingly [ibid, Part 2].

Supermind carries the process to greater heights by updating the Line of Ten Avatars in that today’s applications are far more precise and verifiable. Thus the incarnated members of the Solar Line, by their birthdates and hence the zodiacal signs in which they were born, present us with both the number-powers of the Avatar’s Formula as well as the three gunas, rajas-Capricorn (3), sattwa-Leo (9), tamas-Pisces (6). Note that Rajas-3’s elimination is imperative when the objective is to cling to the dual power-base. As such, the renewing thrust of Rajas is entirely missing, resulting necessarily in stagnation. We may thereby state that the simplest way to recognise asuric forces in the Ages of Vishnu is when they are seen to channel their energies to the elimination of the Third at all costs. This is not an imaginary scenario; it has been the proven goal of elements in both the Ashram and Auroville.

Another example can be provided by the Gunas and the manner in which they figure in the Capricorn symbol-map. Therein the threefold harmony has been broken up because of the partitioned state of the Indian landmass at Independence; this can be verified by observation of the map where Pakistan and Bangladesh (Rajas and Tamas sections) have been carved out leaving gaps where energy seeps through, thus weakening the nation. Such being the case, the resultant three nations have been unable to unite their energies for the expression of a triune harmony which, by its very nature, is rendered invincible. Contemporary subcontinental history describes for us the result of such a truncation.

To prove the validity of Supermind’s Formula as it appears in Sri Aurobindo’s symbol, we are given these living situations which explain the necessity of the Harmony of Three. Particularly today in this time of acceleration, clinging to old formulas can only further the status quo and therefore the programme of the Asura to arrest the forward march, which if allowed to continue can only make manifest what the Truth-Conscious ‘seed’ contains that the Avatar and his Line have planted in the Earth’s consciousness-soil.

Next there is the prominent role of time in the New Way. We take the three phases of time – past, present, future – in the application of the same Formula. Again, our example must be factual and not theoretical: 9 is the future; 6 the past; 3 the present. Carried over to the members of the Solar Line, apart from the gunas each one embodies, they are Sri Aurobindo 9 (Transcendent-future); the Mother 6 (Cosmic-past); the Third 3 (Individual Soul-present). The time mechanism has been (apparently) impaired due to, precisely, rejection of the 3 of the equation. The Ashram and Auroville provide examples of the Past and Future disconnected in their temporal expression because the Bridge of the Present joining one to the other – bridging the abyss of Time as it were – is missing as an integrated experience for the two communities. As noted, there cannot be any fruitful outcome as a result of this temporal truncation. The truncated symbol-map reveals the spatial condition of the nation where Supermind is to be rooted; the former symbol-fields reveal the same, but in time, a temporal truncation in place of a unity of time.

There remains perhaps the most important part to discuss: vertical and horizontal directions. The Solar Line in this particular Age of Vishnu adds the Vertical Direction which is made factual through time’s measures. Thus, as previously indicated, 9/6/3 when applied to actual births in time as measurable in the universal calendar, describe an involution that is then imprinted in the evolutionary matrix through Yoga. In a sense we could state that each birth of the three members of the Formula stakes claim to a time slot. More precisely, each one adds that temporal ingredient to the ‘seed’ of the supramental Truth-Consciousness which the Age of Vishnu requires for its goals to be achieved. Sri Aurobindo’s symbol provides the basic Formula; and we have seen how each member of his line does bring the required number-power into the ‘seed’. Then with the forward march of Time the involved ingredients of the supramental Seed evolve through the agency of Mahakala and become permanent evolutionary imprints.

Once the three are involved through actual births (otherwise how could the Formula become operational?) to truly make this 9th/10th manifestation of Vishnu different from all his other appearances in previous Ages, a fourth element is demanded. This fourth stage is where time and space become integrated; it is the mysterious ‘conquest’ of the Aryan Warrior in the Rig Veda, the formula of which is revealed in the text [ibid, Part 7].

The complete Formula beyond the essential trinity of 9/6/3 is logically another triad added (remember, it is always the Law of Three); then we reach the Zero. This Zero is the actual ‘seed’, in the Veda known as Agni. When this integer is added we come to know that Zero as FULLNESS because it bears the compact triadic formula in its core, similar to the atom which also bears a triad in its nucleus. Contrast this supramental Zero with the Zero that has reached us after Buddhism and Advaita: shunya, emptiness. Restoring that Fullness of Vedic tradition is precisely the ‘error of the Buddha’ which had to be corrected, according to Sri Aurobindo.

And so, we now have 9/6/3/0 – four stages. But still the work of ‘correction’ is not complete. If the process is to be supramental and its symbol is the Square (as in Sri Aurobindo’s own symbol where its innermost square holds the Formula) the 0/4th must somehow take us from the descending involution (0) to evolution (1), for only then can Agni become ‘the leader of the hosts’ and make sense of his description as Usha’s vahana, the white steed. This occurs through a reversal that takes place at that fourth level. The Zero must give forth the One out of the impacted, involved Seed of itself. And so it has been, so it has come to pass.
When this point in time is reached (literally the first point in space to ‘fill the void’), then evolution through and from the Seed begins. Applied to the ongoing discussion, this comes to pass through the Third who gives birth to the Fourth who is the One. In terms of the allocation of ‘fields’ for their Yogas, the Third’s is the centre as provided for her by the Mother in her original blueprint of the Inner Chamber. It is part of the vertical direction, or descent. The Fourth’s is symbolically represented by the horizontal expanse from the central Point – i.e., the City. That is, the Fourth reverses the movement and initiates EXPANSION when the descending CONTRACTION is concluded.

It needs to be understood that these ‘fields’ are not the actual physical temple and city in Auroville. They served for a time as representative focal points for the Yoga of the Third that was to bring into being, through the allegiance of Mahakala, a centre in its fullest cosmological sense. Once completed the representative field was no longer required. The collection, Chronicles of the Inner Chamber (www.matacom.com) makes the process clear: Knowledge displaces Ignorance. Or better, Gnosis makes sense even of the Ignorance by instilling it with ‘purpose’. Thus it is transformed by the dynamics of the New Way to ‘serve the purposes of the One’.

We may now apply what I have described so far to the Indian landmass.

The horizontal direction is India proper where, as its present condition indicates, the Capricorn truncated landmass allows for energy to be drained off. The Supramental Manifestation integrates time and space through the vertical descent of the members of the Solar Line; but in the present condition of the nation a depletion of energy exists in the spatial/physical expanse where this descent is to take root and from where it can envelop the entire globe. Therefore, with the completion of the vertical descent there still remains the question of integration at the fourth stage of the process.
This is achieved through a method that can help to integrate and make whole the Body of the Mother. Hence the Movement (MRVW) initiated a campaign to bring into operation a proper calendar that can achieve this integration in the horizontal field which covers the whole of India, affecting approximately 80% of the population. The present calendar in use by Hindus is a classic ‘divide and rule’ tactic of the Asura. To emasculate Hinduism the simplest means is to impose a calendar that disperses energies rather than unites them; that is, 80% of the nation’s energies. The depleted amount is proportionate to the quantity of landmass that was carved out of the country at Partition [see The Origins and Nature of Hindu Decline]. In such a situation how can Mahakala give his allegiance? When the object under discussion is an integrated whole – in a sense an applied and not theoretical space/time continuum – the problem can be measured by the tools the New Way offers to reach an exact quantum. The question is then, How to make whole what has been torn asunder by the Ignorance?
These factual examples prove one thing conclusively: the indispensability of the birth of the Third and through her the Yoga that adds the 3 to the involved supramental Seed so that with dynamism the agents of the status quo can no longer rule the day. It all hinges on the third integer, without which there is no birth of the One, the conquering victorious Fourth. Without the Third the Son in the old formulation stands ‘crucified’: Death is forever after the inescapable finality for the human species in evolution on Earth. By deduction, Sri Aurobindo’s mission can then be said to have failed, as many in the old fields do contend by their acts, if not their words. Thus this is what the agents of the Status Quo insist upon: the elimination of 3, for with the impulsion she brings and the Fourth’s power of integration, the victory of the One is certain.

The great rahasya, the secret of secrets lies in the supramental formula 9/6/3/0-1 just as Sri Aurobindo announced, for it alone tells us the precise manner in which the Transcendent (9) is made Immanent (1) through the applicable formulas of the new cosmology. The entire process has been superbly transcribed by the Mother in her original plan of the temple’s Inner Chamber, every item of which the agents of the Status Quo have defiled in the Auroville rendition. May we ask, if the value of the Mother’s vision and plan could not be appreciated and respected in the old fields, can we expect guidance on matters of the Integral and Supramental Yogas to come from those retrograde quarters?

The Mother’s vision was the litmus test. The results of that exercise cannot now be wished away [ http://www.matacom.com ].

To order:

~ Secrets of the Earth ~
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© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet 2009
Aeon Centre of Cosmology
South India

The Triune Formula of the Supermind

By
Robert E. Wilkinson ©

In my recent article, ‘The Unravelling of the Auroville Cult’, I wrote about the Vedic ‘Law of Three’ and the absolute necessity of a Third to complete the Supramental Descent begun by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I gave examples of this eternal principle in some of its most revered forms and expressions such as the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the Tridoshas of Ayurveda, the Three Gunas of the Bhagavad Gita, and the Christian Trinity. I even included Sri Aurobindo’s comments on these three powers of the eternal manifestation, by which, he said, we come to understand existence itself. This was immediately rejected by Savitri Era’s Tusar Mohapatra who said that this immutable law, upon which the whole edifice of Vedic knowledge is built, was ‘beyond his comprehension, unverifiable, and thus a piece of fiction.’ How can it be that the same person who would make such a stunningly backward statement has been entrusted with the sacred duty of promoting Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s knowledge to the world.

Evidently, the many thousand year old Vedic tradition, extolled by Sri Aurobindo in his ‘Secret of the Veda’ as the highest spiritual knowledge of which the human mind is capable, is not sufficient for Tusar. He needs more and verifiable proofs. So let us examine the many ways that the Law of Three appears in Sri Aurobindo’s work as a fact of objective knowledge.

In her Agenda of 5 February, 1969, the Mother explained that the Supermind would be intelligible through ‘Numbers, Planets and Principles’. Like Plato and Pythagoras before her, she understood that Numbers are ‘living things’ and contain the highest possible knowledge. Her mention of Planets refers of course to the ancient language of cosmology. But then she makes an astonishing statement: ‘...Not only does it (numbers and planets) express this thing, but it has a power for realizing it.’ Sri Aurobindo affirmed this view saying that the cosmological ideas of the Vedantin were indispensable to a realization of the Great Vedic Ideas in their totality. And in Savitri, he confirms this same knowledge as being the ‘self-known’ content of the human Soul.

‘All that the Gods have learned is there self-known.
There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
And there the tables of the sacred Law,
There is the Book of Being's index page;
The text and glossary of the Vedic truth
Are there; the rhythms and metres of the stars
Significant of the movements of our fate:
The symbol powers of number and of form,
And the secret code of the history of the world
And Nature's correspondence with the soul
Are written in the mystic heart of Life.’
Book One, Canto 5, The Yoga of the King

As we pursue these hidden correspondences, we need look no further for evidence of the Law of Three than Sri Aurobindo’s own symbol. In it we can see the Triple world of the Veda and Puranas expressed in the interlaced triangles of the three-fold divine principle of Sachchidananda: Existence, Knowledge and Bliss and the threefold mundane principles of Mind, Life and Matter.  




In addition to the expression of the Triple Principle, Sri Aurobindo’s symbol contains an equally important expression of Number harmonies in the petals of the Lotus. As we can see, there are 9 petals at the top of the lotus, 6 petals in the middle and 3 petals at the bottom, resting on the 7 waves. For those who SEE, this arrangement of the lotus is itself an unmistakable expression of the Law of Three and a Number Harmony that will be repeated throughout this work. The importance of these numbers, 9, 6, and 3 are not exclusive to Sri Aurobindo’s work but represent a universal key that helps us to understand the occult dynamic by which Spirit becomes Matter. The numbers 9, 6, 3 represent the involutionary formula, a Tri-fold point which lies at the core of matter as well as the octaves of a descent from the Formless into Form. As the great Nicola Tesla once wrote:

"…If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe."

Since the manifestation of the Avatars is determined by their inherent association with the Time-Spirit, their three-staged descent upon the earth occurs within an exquisite Geometry of Time that cannot possibly be concocted. It can only be arranged by the Supermind and thus becomes the basis of their objective cosmic credentials. One of the most fascinating examples of this Supramental formula, which may be found in the original Temple architecture, is the way it appears in the dates of births of the members of the Solar Line. As revealed below, these numbers appear in the exact order of the actual descent.

Sri Aurobindo was born in 1872: 1+8+7+2 = 18  = 9
The Mother was born in 1878 1+8+7+8 =24       = 6
Thea, ΘΕΑ, was born in 1938: 1+9+3+8 = 21      = 3

The Mother once wrote that the whole earth and everything it contains is a kind of concentration, a condensation of something which exists in other worlds invisible to the material eye. Each thing manifest here has its principle, idea or essence somewhere in the subtler regions. The triune formula of the Supermind allows us to follow the descent of these principles, ideas and essences as a condensation of consciousness from the formless into forms that ultimately manifest as our material reality. In the scheme of the Supramental Descent we observe that this process has three stages: the Transcendent 9, the Cosmic 6 and the Individual Soul 3. These octaves of descent may be observed through an understanding of certain laws of correspondence and equivalence that are expressed in the Hermetic axiom, ‘As above, So below’. As we follow these eternal principles in their descent from the higher planes into material manifestation they manifest first as Cosmic and Planetary harmonies before reaching a highly specific individuation on the Earth.

This sacred formula is impeccably expressed in the life and work of each member of the Solar line. Sri Aurobindo’s role as the TRANSCENDENT Principle - 9, was largely concentrated on planting the integral seed of the Supramental creation. He remained on the Transcendent heights rarely even coming out of his room for over 24 years. His work on the inner planes bore the nature of a vast and total spiritual action as expressed in his epic poem, Savitri. As the power and force of the Solar Line descended from the Transcendent to the COSMIC plane - 6, the Mother worked tirelessly preparing new material forms which could accommodate and contain the Supramental consciousness-force. Toward the end of her life the knowledge was brought down and unveiled in material creation as the original plan for her Temple. It was a New Model of the Universe, a Cosmos in microcosm representing the Soul of the Earth and what she called ‘the symbol of the Future Realization’.

As we follow the actions of each member of the Solar Line, we find that Sri Aurobindo's work on the transcendent planes is almost never revealed. The Mother's work on the occult planes is somewhat clearer yet even she was not inclined to explain the details of what she did and saw. It isn't until the Third level of the work that these details become revealed because that is the nature of the Third, precision in truth and the ability to APPLY the knowledge. As the work of the Supermind reaches the Third stage, the realization of the INDIVIDUAL Soul – 3, we begin to perceive this precision because the action is observed from the most intimate dimension the human consciousness can experience, the 'center' or individual Soul that Sri Aurobindo described so beautifully in Savitri. Through the work of the Third, what before in the old spirituality could only be expressed in terms of paradoxes and irreconcilables, can now be perceived in a vastly truer light. This is the level of the Gnostic Being and the evolutionary goal of the Supramental Manifestation. With the ‘keys of knowledge’ unveiled by the Third, which ‘not only express the Supermind but also provides the power to realize it’, seekers are granted a direct experience of the Supreme within the physical manifestation and the means to KNOW and not merely BELIEVE that the Truth-Consciousness has descended and is now manifest upon the Earth.

We could go on and on with these objective proofs. The 3, 9, and 6, have a correspondence with the Gunas: Rajas, Sattva and Tamas or as they are known in cosmological terms, Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable. These energy flows are also expressed as the Speaker, the Voice and the Word. Notably, each member of the Solar Line was born in the sign of one of the Three Gunas: Sri Aurobindo, a Leo – Fixed Guna, the Mother, a Pisces – a Mutable Guna, and the Third, a Capricorn, a Cardinal Guna. We even see these numbers expressed in their names: Aurobindo has 9 letters, Mother has 6, and ΘΕΑ (Thea) as it is properly written has 3.

The sole purpose of these number, energetic and planetary harmonies is the expression of WHOLENESS and INTEGRALITY. As much as Tusar and Paulette might protest, you simply cannot have wholeness with a partial manifestation of just Sri Aurobindo and the Mother any more than you could have a complete manifestation based on only two Gunas. THREE are required. It is an immutable law: The Law of Three.

The Unravelling of the Auroville Cult

 

By
Robert E. Wilkinson ©

Decades of Soul-numbing dogma have finally taken their toll as we watch the predictable collapse of the Auroville cult and its famous ‘spin machine’. What was once an organized opposition to the Line of Supramental Descent is now coming apart at the seams. Internecine feuds and bitter betrayals signal the long expected implosion of a community built on the unstable foundation of connivance and lies. Its dénouement, predicted by Sri Aurobindo himself, is a direct result of the Supramental Force and its unrelenting demand for Truth as it presses more and more in its descent toward matter. What we are seeing today in Auroville and its internet propaganda machine, ‘Savitri Era’, are the final throes of decades of usurpation of Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s work by an Aurovillian mental elite who, for over thirty years, have attempted to obstruct the Supramental Descent and entomb its living message. Through a rigid Aurobindonian Orthodoxy of their own design these usurpers have managed to suppress the descent of a Knowledge unparalleled since the Vedic age. But for those who SEE, it is clear that their long reign of darkness has finally come to an end. Let us review the facts:

When the Mother was asked to describe Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary work, she wrote:

"The consciousness is like a ladder: at each great epoch there has been one great being capable of adding one more step to the ladder and reaching a place where the ordinary consciousness has never been... one more step to the ladder without losing contact with the material (consciousness)... to reach the Highest and at the same time connect the top to the bottom... To go up and down and join the top to the bottom is the whole secret of realisation, and that is the work of the Avatar.”

The evolutionary task of Sri Aurobindo and his line was to bring about the descent of the Supreme Truth Consciousness and to prepare for its general manifestation on the earth by becoming the rungs of that ladder and the living embodiments of that descent. Each of the four members of the ‘Solar Line’, as they are called, represent a specific stage or field of yoga which unites the contiguous planes of Spiritual, Mental, Vital and Physical, incarnating the complete evolutionary spectrum in human form and thereby revealing the deepest secrets of creation. Those familiar with the revolutionary nature of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga will appreciate that it is a complete "reversal" of the old yogas which for millennia sought a transcendence of the physical reality through the realization of a Timeless, Boundless and Ineffable Brahman. The work of the 9th Avatar of Vedic tradition represents a radical departure from traditional Indian spirituality and turns upon a DESCENT and ultimate transformation of the Vital and Physical planes. Sri Aurobindo explains:

“The goal is not to lose oneself in the Divine Consciousness. The goal is to let the Divine Consciousness penetrate into Matter and transform it.” Sri Aurobindo - The Mother 15: p.191

Through the yogic efforts of Solar Line, the Supreme consciousness and knowledge was brought down in what he termed ‘the descent of the Supermind’. Truth was no longer “up there” in an ineffable indescribable Transcendent but brought down by Sri Aurobindo and his line in what is demonstrably the ultimate and conclusive reconciliation of Spirit and Matter. The ontological duality of Purusha and Prakriti of which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were the living embodiments was transformed into a seamless continuum through the addition of a Third principle which resolved this ancient polarity through a process of Synthesis and Becoming. The absolute necessity of a Third to complete this process follows a fundamental principal of Vedic knowledge known as “the Law of Three”. It is the expression of an irreducible truth that at the heart of the creation lies a tripartite harmony of energy or “seed” from which the entire cosmos evolves. The three principle gods of India, the “Trimurti” of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are representative of this essential truth and reflect its supreme importance. The ancient tradition of Ayurveda honors this essential harmony of Three as the “Tridoshas” (the three energies), the primary factors of the human body that govern our health. In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna describes this occult law as the “Three Gunas” which he praised as the basis of an Ultimate Wisdom. And in Christianity this eternal formula is simply known as the “Trinity of God.” In more modern times this sublime principle was reconstructed by the philosopher G.W. Hegel to describe his dialectical process of Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. With the overwhelming evidence and tradition supporting this eternal principle one is simply dumbfounded that the Auroville cabal could so glibly dismiss the Third as irrelevant to the Supramental design. Was it not Sri Aurobindo himself who wrote:

“While the Divine is One, it is also manifold... It is at once Transcendental, Cosmic and Individual. By knowing the eternal unity of these three powers of the eternal manifestation, God, the Cosmos and the Individual self, and their intimate necessity to each other, we come to understand existence itself.…” Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga

With the contribution of the Third, ‘Thea’ as she is known, the formidable work of Synthesis was accomplished. The Supreme Truth was no longer simply a matter of Being and its correspondences but also embraced Time and the Becoming. For the first time in the history of spirituality an Integral harmony of Spirit and Matter, Being and Becoming and Time and Eternity was REALIZED and with it, an entirely new language by which these formerly inexpressible truths could be known, communicated and most importantly, APPLIED. With the discoveries of the Third we are finally able to move beyond speculation into an ‘objectively verifiable knowledge’ which forms the basis of a Supramental Gnosis which Sri Aurobindo described as,’ free from doubt, self-evident, self-existent, irrefragable and absolute’.

In Book Two, Canto Six of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo describes the impossible task of the Third as, ‘catching the boundless in a net of birth, casting the spirit into physical form, lending speech and thought to the Ineffable, finding new bodies for the Infinite, and images of the Unimaginable’. For the last 40 years Thea has worked tirelessly to accomplished that task, producing a prodigious body of work unequalled in the history of spirituality. And what has happened to those published works which reveal this Divine Measure by which the ultimate reconciliation of Spirit and Matter may be known? They were rejected out of hand and banned from the official list of titles by the same Aurovillian intelligentsia that had only years earlier destroyed the Vedic content of the Mother’s plan for her Temple. The details of this distortion and deception have been discussed elsewhere and need not be dealt with here, only the result of this infamy which is now being played out before our eyes in the acts of Peter Heehs, Tusar Mohapatra, RY Deshpande and Andrew Cohen among others.

It is a well know fact that lesser mortals rush to fill the void and absence of authority once the guru departs. Given the history of modern religions, one might even argue that this kind of usurpation and dogmatic entombment of the guru’s teaching, once they have died, is in the natural order of things. What inevitably follows is the formation of a Cult that seizes the guru’s teachings and crystallizes them into a rigid mental dogma over which they preside as ‘owners’ of the new truth. It is widely known that this is exactly what took place after the passing of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And if their work had followed the pattern of traditional Indian spirituality the dogma which formed around their teachings would doubtless have become the greatest religion in the world. But the Supramental descent did not end with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The Line continues on today, albeit behind the scenes, with its Third and Fourth levels and supported by those ‘few who shall see what none yet understands’. In their infinite wisdom Sri Aurobindo and the Mother knew that their work would be usurped and distorted by some of their closest disciples. He warned us about this in Savitri calling them, ‘the wise men who talk and sleep’. But they also had an inviolable faith in the unconquerable power of the Supermind working relentlessly towards its final apotheosis.

When the Mother’s closest disciples rejected the impeccable vision of her temple’s Inner Chamber and destroyed the greatest feat of sacred architecture yet to be realized upon the earth she did not insist on imposing her will. Instead, she said:

“…what they see is all mental, They do not know. Who is there that knows? It is only when one sees. There is not one of them who sees. I do not believe in exterior decisions. I simply believe in one thing only: the force of the consciousness which is making a pressure like that (crushing gesture) and the pressure goes on becoming greater… which means that it will sort out the people. So since there are not many who can understand, I say nothing, I look and I wait.’ The Mother, Matrimandir Dialogues

Sri Aurobindo expressed the same unwavering confidence in that Supramental Force taking his work to completion when even the most skeptical would be obliged to believe what the few already see. He wrote:


“ In Matter shall be lit the spirit's glow,
In body and body kindled the sacred birth;
Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars,
The days become a happy pilgrim march,
Our will a force of the Eternal's power,
And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.
A few shall see what none yet understands;
God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour
And belief shall be not till the work is done.”
Savitri -- A Legend and a Symbol), Page: 55

What we are witnessing today in the disintegration of the Aurovillian intelligentsia is precisely that Force of Consciousness. Having rejected the contribution of the Third in the line, a knowledge that would reveal the imperishable truths of the entire Supramental Descent, Aurobindonians are left floundering in the half-light of a religious consciousness, vacillating between belief and doubt and unable to articulate a believable defense of who Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were and the utter uniqueness of their teachings. Opting for a truncated version of the Supramental Descent by excluding the Third and Fourth members of the line, the faithful have no other choice but to conclude that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother failed in their stated mission or else cling to the fragile hope that history will eventually provide evidence of their success hundreds of years down the road. Having rejected the higher knowledge, they have forfeited the opportunity to KNOW and not just BELIEVE that the Supermind has descended and that its operations can even now be measured with a precision and exactitude that grants the individual a direct experience of the Supreme within the physical manifestation. Lacking the Realization that such a vision confers, most find themselves stuck in an unsatisfying and untenable situation and forced to come to terms with an over-idealized image of a possibly failed guru with which they have now become completely identified.  

With the increasing pressure of Consciousness brought on by the Supermind, devotees are feeling the crushing contractions that the Mother predicted. Cracks are beginning to appear in the public face of the cult dividing its members along the lines of belief and doubt. Those who can no longer justify the all-consuming psychological projection onto the guru will naturally seek a means to humanize him, simultaneously releasing themselves from the obligations of selfless servitude and giving full flower to their vital ego. There can be absolutely no doubt that this is the underlying dynamic behind Peter Heehs’ book, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. Through his efforts to humanize and de-contectualize Sri Aurobindo, Heehs has set in motion a process of disillusionment that has churned the psyches of Aurobindonians around the globe. Because of this he has been branded a traitor, an enemy, a scoundrel and much worse. And while every attempt has been made by the faithful to distance and dissociate themselves from his literary heresy, it cannot be overlooked that he arose from and is a product of the Ashram and the Auroville culture where he has lived for many years. Indeed, he is not an ‘outsider’ but simply a more visible example of the pervasive lack of realization that has turned Sri Aurobindo’s work and mission into a distorted caricature of itself. Since he has also rejected the contribution of the Third, Heehs is unable to communicate the most basic meaning of Sri Aurobindo's appearance on the earth as the 9th Avatar of Vedic tradition. The only course left to him is a disingenuous dismissal of Sri Aurobindo’s Avatarhood as a distracting hagiographic idealization in which he had no real interest.

'...What about the assertion that Aurobindo was an avatar? I can’t say that the question interests me very much. Aurobindo never claimed the distinction for himself, and I don’t think anyone alive is in a position to say one way or the other...' (Peter Heehs, from the Columbia website)

To persons of knowledge, Heehs’ comments are simply outrageous. It is as if the Vedic tradition of the Avatar is meaningless, even though it is sanctified by the Gita in Sri Krishna's own words, and Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother’s as well. Moreover, Heehs’ contention that no one alive today is in a position to say one way or another belies an embarrassing lack of research on his part or, like the Auroville gang, a calculated decision to ignore the volumes of proofs that Thea has produced. Since these numerous and non-speculative proofs of Sri Aurobindo’s Avataric credentials have been accepted and catalogued by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives, an organization which lists Heehs as one of its founding members, there can be simply no doubt that he has misstated the facts.

Those remaining devotees who have also rejected the knowledge but who nevertheless revile Heehs and consider his book a betrayal of Sri Aurobindo are left no choice but to embrace a greater religious fervor and a heightened idealization of the guru. When one is dealing with disillusionment in the absence of real knowledge how can they continue that level of commitment? Their gurus are gone, their teachings are being plagiarized and distorted by outsiders. People they respected and looked to for guidance have betrayed and abandoned them. The only option is to deny the facts and idealize the beloved out of all proportion. Tusar Mohapatra has provided us with an unmistakable example of this view when he writes:

“ The divine manifestation of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo is an unprecedented phenomenon which can't be explained by past mythological instances or received metaphysical formulations. Parameters of perennial philosophy or speculative prophecies like eternal recurrence fall flat here. All talk of the Messiah, the Tirthankar or the Avatar is idle intellectual approximations.
The mystery of their physical life, meeting, and work on earth is nothing in comparison to what is yet untold about them and their global action to unfold. When the shackle of the ramshackle past religions shall start crumbling then we may witness a gigantic backlash. The Mother & Sri Aurobindo have already accomplished the metaphysical victory. The praxis, alas, is but to follow to the peril of all ancient castles.
The Mother & Sri Aurobindo have already imbibed the leap in their embodied existence the consequences of which are simply unimaginable. Why and how their integrality is in the process of engulfing the whole world in spite of terrible defiance and resistance will be an interesting spectacle in the years to come. Savitri Erans must lift their flags high enough for others to spot and be a sport.” TM

This is a classic example of someone taking their own unfounded hagiographic inflation to extremes. What is most revealing is Tusar’s desire to get away from all formulation, mythic or otherwise which allows him to believe whatever fantasy he likes without the inconvenience of having to deal with proof of his claims and the facts that support them. He does so by putting them “up there” on the Transcendent heights beyond the reach and explanation of mortal man. This is a perfect example of how devotees with no yogic experience and realization attempt to turn this epochal spiritual work into a Religion. What remains are un-provable pronouncements about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother solely derived from Tusar’s subjective devotional fervor. His hopes are pinned on the ‘years to come’ and any fellow disillusioned Aurobindonians who might rally to his flag. In a work characterized by objective knowledge and precision, this kind of unqualified ‘new age’ response is simply unacceptable. By placing Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on incomparable, unreachable Transcendent heights, Tusar believes that he is doing them a service but in fact, as we have discussed in this paper, he is contradicting the very purpose they came to achieve. If joining the top of the ladder to the bottom is the whole secret of realization and the work of the Avatar, Tusar has just yanked the ladder out from under them and made their stated evolutionary goal of the divinization of matter a virtual impossibility.

I don’t mean to single Tusar out because, as the demands of Truth increase, the inability to produce a meaningful and accurate explanation of this work is being repeated by many of Auroville’s so-called wise men. In a recent posting on his blog “Mirror of Tomorrow”, (note that with these folks it is always about tomorrow) entitled ‘India’s Independence and Spiritual Destiny’, R. Y. Deshpande wrote a moving lament about India’s unfulfilled destiny and how things might possibly change for the better. He writes:

‘…Our hope lies in being open to the subtler nuances of the working of the forces of life that operate always within and around us. In the totality of our approach we will have to perhaps move from the rational to the luminous intuitive modes and tools of knowledge and action. Fortunate we will be if we can accept, understand and apply what has been given to us by the Seer of the New Age.’ RYD

I found his nonsensical comments curiously ironic because Deshpande has made a mission of distorting and suppressing the very knowledge that would allow for India’s rise. The luminious knowledge that he hopes someday to find has been set forth by Thea chapter and verse. It is precise, it is objective and resides in every curve, every line, and every centimeter of the Mother’s original temple plan. But every attempt to explain and discuss it has been met by Deshpande, Tusar and others in Auroville and the Ashram with denial, disbelief, negation, and rejection. And what do they offer in its place… distortion, falsification, meaningless speculation, pious platitudes and empty hope. His every word consolidates the view that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and even India have failed in their mission. And yet he continues with pretentions of authority and knowledge as if he had the imprimatur of Sri Aurobindo himself. Deshpande goes on with an unconvincing mea culpa:

‘…we are entrenching ourselves more and more into falsehood and fraud. We are strengthening falsehood and fraud more and more… It seems there is no end to our stupidity…. because we had no conviction in the words of the Avatar. One recoils despicably when there is the disregard for things that come from knowledge founded on the workings of the spirit.’ RYD

On this we are in total agreement, but what unbelievable hypocrisy. This very ‘knowledge founded on the workings of the spirit’ has been offered time and time again only to be roundly rejected by Deshpande and his cronies. The ‘tools of knowledge and action’ that he imagines as a saving grace have been given out by Thea since the early 70’s. But thanks to Deshpande and his colleagues, her dozens of books and hundreds of articles on Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and India have been arbitrarily withheld from the Integral Yoga community for over thirty years.

Is it any wonder then that with this kind of incompetent leadership Spiritual dilettantes like Andrew Cohen rush to patronize and diminish Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s stature so he can brand himself and his ‘EnlightenNext’ magazine as the leading authority on “Evolutionary Spirituality”. As Carter Phipps writes, ‘…the offices of EnlightenNext believe that the reason Sri Aurobindo’s work is not more celebrated is because his followers ‘view his work in such mythic and messianic terms’ regarding him as a flawless saint or Avatar.’ According to Phipps, students of Aurobindo and the Mother have a tendency to take this kind of hagiographic inflation to extreme heights. Given his limited understanding of Sri Aurobindo’s work and unfounded devotional hyperbole, Tusar plays right into this characterization.

Because of their rejection of the Third and Fourth levels of the Supramental Descent and the consequent inability to speak knowledgeably about Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s mission, their most ardent followers sit idly by while some of the major themes of the yoga have been plagiarized and distorted by opportunist like Andrew Cohen. He is even now conducting a seminar in Tuscany, Italy on “Being and Becoming”. According to Cohen’s brochure, he is inviting his students to immerse themselves in the ‘empty ground of Being’ and to practice the art of Meditation. Those of us familiar with the jargon of the old spirituality and its buzz words recognize immediately that Cohen, like Ken Wilber and others in the so-called Integral movement are trying to capitalize on Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary themes only to carry them back into the confines of an old and partial metaphysic that seeks Emptiness and Transcendence as its highest goal. The idea of the Vedic Fullness which lies at the heart of the Supramental knowledge is completely lost on these people who, like their counterparts in Auroville, continue to distort and deceive with impunity because no one dares to call them to account or expose their corruption of Sri Aurobindo’s message. This sad state of affairs simply cannot continue.

After the passing of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, there was a complete breakdown of order in Auroville and unremitting conflict between the various camps competing for authority over the Guru’s teachings. Because of mismanagement, lawsuits, and infighting between these various factions, Auroville had to be taken over by the Indian government in 1988 against the Mother’s express command. Since then it has been governed by the Auroville Foundation whose board is appointed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The Mother’s ‘City of Dawn’, meant to be a ‘Center’ for the realization of human unity, was thereby reduced to the status of an arrogant fundamentalist and elitist cult that has operated for decades with the de facto approval of the Indian government. Under their auspices, crores of rupees have been raised for the construction of a Matrimandir which was knowingly misrepresented to the public as faithful to the Mother’s original design. Numerous attempts by persons of knowledge to correct this travesty and hold open and transparent hearings on the sacred dimensions of the Mother’s Vedic design have been rebuffed by those with vested ego and financial interests who fear having their deceitful activities exposed to the light of day. Auroville, the one point on the earth where the Mother said that ‘Truth can and must reign’ has been occupied for decades by forces of deception, distortion, and misdirection. This cannot, will not go on. If India is to recover her divine birthright and fulfill her role as the Light of the world, Auroville and the Ashram must be brought into line with the needs of Indian Unity and there must be an immediate end to the obstruction and censorship of Thea’s written works. Moreover, full and transparent hearings must be held on the Matrimandir that has been so disingenuously put forward as true and faithful to the Mother’s Vedic plan.

Given the increasing pressure of the Supramental Consciousness pushing our world to the edge of collapse there is only one possible course, as the Mother said, ‘It is a choice between serving the truth or being destroyed.’

 
  

As those who read this blog will know, it is dedicated to the Restoration of Vedic Wisdom. The fine article below by Lori Tompkins is vivid testimony to the forces opposing such a restoration. Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, “Thea” as she is known, is one of the world’s most prescient seers. Over the last forty years she has produced a body of Vedic knowledge unequalled in its scope and specificity and thoroughly grounded in a non-speculative and verifiable cosmology. What she has revealed of the ancient Veda carries the power of renaissance and represents a fatal blow to the forces of atavism that would keep India in the dark ages. Today we are witnesses to the struggle between darkness and Light with the future of India and the World hanging in the balance.
RW

The ‘Inconvenient Necessity of Producing Evidence’:
The Deportation Case Against Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

By Lori Tompkins
4 August 2009

The Times of India announced on 30 July 2009 that the Indian Government will release a special postal stamp on 4 April of next year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo’s arrival in Pondicherry, where he narrowly avoided arrest and deportation by British authorities who considered him a dangerous spoiler of their colonial rule. Coincidentally, the 31st of July 2009 happened to be the 100th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo’s ‘Open Letter to My Countrymen’ which he wrote in response to his year-long imprisonment (May 1908 – May 1909) and the persistent threat of deportation from Indian soil. The letter began:

‘The position of a public man who does his duty in India today is too precarious to permit of his being sure of the morrow. I have recently come out of a year’s seclusion from work for my country on a charge which there was not a scrap of reliable evidence to support, but my acquittal is no security either against the trumping up of a fresh accusation or the arbitrary law of deportation which dispenses with the inconvenient formality of a charge and the still more inconvenient necessity of producing evidence.’

Surely some find it interesting that in the same month the government announced their plans to celebrate Sri Aurobindo’s arrival in the safe haven of Pondicherry, they sent police to the door of Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, telling her she had four and a half days (two business days) to leave the country or she would be arrested. Ms. Norelli-Bachelet, a resident of India since 1971, is recognized by many in India and throughout the world as an essential continuation of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, and especially as an extension of his will towards uplifting the Sanatana Dharma and the true Vedic idea that has been lost on Indians and the rest of the world alike for aeons. During her nine years of residence at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry (1971-1980) she published seven books: The Magical Carousel – A Zodiacal Odyssey, September Letters, Symbols and the Question of Unity, The Gnostic Circle – a Synthesis in the Harmonies of the Cosmos, The Hidden Manna, and The New Way – a Study in the Rise and Establishment of a Gnostic Society. The knowledge found in these books is its own proof that Ms. Norelli-Bachelet’s yoga and consciousness is a seamless continuation of the ‘Supramental Descent’ as initiated by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The methodology is clearly and meticulously revealed by which India and the peoples of the world can outgrow their cosmic ignorance, self-ignorance and discordant consciousness, and gain a higher, more integral vision of self and world affairs.

In 1980 Ms. Norelli-Bachelet moved to the Palani Hills of Tamil Nadu where she continued writing books and established the Aeon Centre of Cosmology as well as a dairy farm and the Carossel cheese factory. Her centre, dairy and modest cheese factory has employed and improved the lives of many nearby Indians, and students come from all over India and the world to study with her, assist her and be in her substantial presence.

So why is it that this commendable woman who has only enhanced India and been a true heroine in the Movement for the Restoration of Vedic Wisdom has been so abruptly asked to leave the county? [1] In the news we find few answers. A brief article appeared in the Times of India on 18 July 2009 titled ‘Chile president’s aunt asked to leave India’. Many readers were probably scratching their heads on that day wondering why the India-loving aunt of Michele Bachelet was being forced to leave after 38 years of uninterrupted residence. Whose boat did she rock too much? Is her opinion of Sri Aurobindo too high? Where is the pressure for expulsion coming from? Who wants to discredit her by sending her packing? Who has she ticked off to this extent?

A few days later on 21 July the Chennai Times of India published an article by Radha Venkatesan titled ‘Chilean Prez kin asked to leave India: Patrizia, Director of Yoga Center in Kodaikanal, Found To Be OverStaying’. This article adds a few interesting details to the story. Venkatesan reported that Ms. Norelli-Bachelet was directed to leave India for “overstaying” her visa which expired on 31 December 2008. She wrote, ‘District officials refused to elaborate on why the police objected to her visa renewal. However, the police said the local people living near Patrizia’s cosmological centre had opposed her stay. In 1992, a case related to a land dispute was filed against her, but she was acquitted, police said.’

If the reporter had done a bit more research she may have found out that not only did some of Ms. Norelli-Bachelet’s neighbors ‘oppose’ her stay, a group of 30 villagers had actually attacked her and two of her associates with baseball bats in 1992.

Questioned about the ‘land dispute’ mentioned in the Chennai Times article Ms. Norelli-Bachelet responded, ‘This is totally false. It was a murderous assault. [The policeman’s] intention is to show how I was creating trouble locally. He would not like to cast light on the real happening because two policemen were indicted and punished for their mischievous behaviour. I petitioned the National Human Rights Commission and a top-notch investigator was sent (1995) on a five-day investigation of my complaint to Kodaikanal. He found FACTUAL details proving everything I stated, such as disappearance of all material evidence, photos of the injured, and so on. The police had made it disappear. We were attacked by a gang; 30 armed with baseball-like carved bats against three of us. Several years went by and when no further action was taken by the NHRC, enquiries were made. They then gave the findings as pertaining to a ‘land dispute’ only. Most probably the original report filed by the investigator also vanished. But I do have a copy. There was no land dispute at all.’

Robert E. Wilkinson, vice president of Aeon Group, gives the following account: ‘The story goes that the locals had been provoked to attack Skambha [Aeon Centre] on the contrived story of her diverting the flow of water from the river and depriving the people downstream of the water for their crops. This was a complete lie which I documented on film when I was there.’ Mr. Wilkinson also remembers that one of Ms. Norelli-Bachelet’s associates was tied up and nearly thrown off Skambha’s waterfall in the 1992 attack.

After this episode failed to kill, scare off or tarnish Ms. Norelli-Bachelet, an international human rights campaign was launched against her by the same group. Letters accusing her of human rights abuses were sent ‘by the hundreds’ to the Indian Home Ministry mainly from certain European countries where Pax Christi, the organization which supported the campaign, is based. ‘At that time the agents of this organisation operated only with local support from the police and petty officials,’ says Ms. Norelli-Bachelet. ‘They had no support either in Chennai or even less in Delhi. Now it is different. These agents are everywhere, so they can secure an exit order from the Union Home Ministry itself, making sure that giving me only four days time I had no chance to get a stay. A manoeuvre of this sort had to be from someone high up.’

One might reasonably ask, ‘Why in the world would Pax Christi (or anyone) be so intent on getting rid of this woman?’ One would have to be familiar with the cohesive yoga and mission of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Ms. Norelli-Bachelet to understand the comprehensive threat that the only living member of this trinity poses.

With this in mind, some readers might appreciate the following synchronicity. On the same day Ms. Norelli-Bachelet was given her abrupt notice to leave India, the first chapter of her latest book, Secrets of the Earth – Questions and Answers on the Line of Ten Avatars of Vedic Tradition, was published in Bhavan’s Journal. This book discusses Sri Aurobindo as the 9th and 10th in the Line of Ten Avatars, as well as the fallacy and inconsistencies of the Nirayana zodiac system which many Indians rely on to organize and understand their lives. Ms. Norelli-Bachelet writes that knowledge of the true avatar of our age and knowledge of the true Vedic sacrifice – i.e. the Earth’s twelve month year as discussed in Sri Aurobindo’s The Secret of the Veda –, are both essential for cultivating the consciousness that will establish ‘a new heaven and a new Earth’.

A woman furthering Sri Aurobindo’s ideas of ‘The Life Divine’ and teaching of the true significance of Vedic symbolism and cosmology is certainly a pesky obstacle to certain agencies who thirst to ‘harvest souls’ via whatever trick or financial incentive. The very success of their ‘mission’ (by whatever name they call it) depends on how well and how completely they can separate millions of Indians from the living and livable significance of their Vedic roots. However if the investigation into ‘where is the pressure for expulsion coming from?’ and ‘who wants to discredit Ms. Norelli-Bachelet by sending her packing?’ is limited to evangelists who consider Hindu rituals and the Vedic sacrifice to be akin to devil worship and barbarism, many antagonists of Ms. Norelli-Bachelet’s yoga would skirt under the radar and the story would remain incomplete.

Certainly the Nirayana astrologers, and all who calculate their calendars and temple celebrations by the Nirayana system, would be thrilled if Ms. Norelli-Bachelet, who praises the Tropical or Sayana zodiac and discredits their own floating measure of the year as an anathema to Vedic wisdom, is ousted from her Indian seat. She has pointed out that the four fixed or ‘preservation’ signs of the Tropical zodiac and other cosmological symbols are not only found in the Bible, a fact which most Christians like to ignore; but also in the Rig Veda, specifically in the hymn to Vishnu the Preserver. This observation, which is not subjective at all, is basically ignored and buried by Vedic historians and scholars. In ‘Cosmology in the Rig Veda – the Third Premise’, Ms. Norelli-Bachelet discusses this particular impasse:

‘Indian scholars will contend that these zodiacal figures are equally “imports”, similar to an “imported civilisation”. Therefore, those who seek to support their theories of an indigenous culture will argue that the zodiac as we know it today was brought to India by the Greeks, long after the Rigveda was penned; and that therefore its symbols cannot possibly be found in the Veda.’ [2]

So one is left to wonder, who among those who will be greatly relieved and even happy to see Ms. Norelli-Bachelet banished from her home in Tamil Nadu, is truly pulling the strings? What is the real conspiracy of circumstances that has led to this juncture in which a veritable Indian national treasure, who will eventually be celebrated (despite the color of her skin and her non-Indian place of birth) as being equally instrumental as Sri Aurobindo in helping India rise to the call of its destiny and its greatness, is facing deportation 100 years after Sri Aurobindo’s own trials and tribulations at the hands of the British government? In this current drama it is apparently Ms. Norelli-Bachelet who is ‘highly dangerous’ to the rule and status quo of ignorance that keeps Indians from rising up and organizing themselves by the power of their own Sanatana Dharma.

Now many more than five days have passed since the notice to leave was served on the 15th of July and Ms. Norelli-Bachelet is still in-country (thankfully not in a jail cell). Friends in high places have apparently intervened. Radha Venkatesan reported in the Chennai Times article, ‘The state home department has asked the police to await further orders from the external affairs ministry.’

According to Ms. Norelli-Bachelet the Indian government has a file with her name on it that is chock full of false accusations of illegal, suspicious or otherwise offensive behavior that has been built up by her detractors over the decades. She is now demanding that her file be fully investigated and purified of its bogus contents. In the words of Sri Aurobindo (as per his 31 July 1909 ‘Open Letter’ to his countrymen), she is demanding that the Indian government observe the ‘inconvenient necessity of producing evidence’ to support the charges or judgment against her. Will her countrymen and women support her in this very reasonable demand, or voice no concern as she is thrown to the wolves of vested interest or vested ignorance?

[1] The Movement for the Restoration of Vedic Wisdom, Manifesto: The Zero, the Veda and the Divine Measure of the Year; MRVW Yahoo Group.
[2] ‘Cosmology in the Rig Veda – the Third Premise’ as published in The Hindu, 9 July 2002

In his recent series, “Buddha and the World”, Deepak Chopra puts forward a 2500 year old ‘spiritual’ tradition as the most reasonable solution for our complex modern problems.
While I have the greatest respect for Dr.Chopra, on this account he could not be more wrong.

The Error of the Buddha

By
Robert E. Wilkinson ©

“The goal is not to lose oneself in the Divine Consciousness. The goal is to let the Divine Consciousness penetrate into Matter and transform it.” Sri Aurobindo - The Mother 15: p.191

One of the most troubling developments of our modern age is the inverse relationship between Knowledge and Belief. The less people know about an issue, the more they are willing to believe without questioning. This has led to some tragic social and political consequences but nowhere is this lack of discrimination more problematic than in the conflicting religious beliefs that are presently driving our world to the brink of destruction. If we are ever to turn the tide of this mounting chaos, we must be willing to stop and take a long hard look at the beliefs and suppositions that underlie our collective religious life. Only then can we move forward together with a healing Knowledge.

In his series, “Buddha and the World”, Deepak Chopra has given us a splendid opportunity to do this, to ask the difficult questions rather than simply accept his propositions as undisputed fact. I am most grateful to him for his efforts and hope that he will join in this discussion and respond to the points that are raised.

At the beginning of his article Dr. Chopra writes of a world teetering between madness and catastrophe, a problem he blames in large part upon the burden of past beliefs, a fact plainly evident today in the widening Shia-Sunni conflict in the Middle East. The solution to these complex global problems, says Chopra, are the teachings of the Buddha.

I could not disagree more. Chopra raises the central issue of ‘the burden of past beliefs’ yet he is somehow unable to recognize that Buddhism itself falls into that very category. Does he not see that the most urgent problem of our time, underlying all the rest, is that our whole conception of Spirituality indeed Reality, is based upon teachings that are over 2,000 years old? We would not tolerate this kind of dogmatic intransigence in our scientific endeavors so why do we continue to cling to the notion that God spoke to man over 2,000 years ago through Buddha, Jesus and a few others and has remained silent on the question of spirituality and the human condition ever since? This makes absolutely no sense but each passing day bears witness to a world arrested by the atavistic beliefs of religions long past, with many still locked in some form of convert or kill mentality.
Our attachment to these old religions naturally begs the question: Are the teachings of Buddha and others who lived over 2000 year ago still relevant to our Twenty-first Century society? Chopra will certainly claim, as many have, that Buddha’s teachings are based upon eternal and unchanging truths. But let us carefully examine this claim.

It is a widely accepted but erroneous ‘myth’ that there is but One Eternal Truth realized by all sages at all times though it may vary in form from one culture to another. This ‘One Truth’ is static and unchanging and many believe it represents the most exalted heights that human consciousness can attain. There is however compelling testimony to the contrary, a more integral and enlightened view which holds that Spirituality is a progressive movement, same as the biological evolution, constantly revealing new and fuller aspects of the Divine Consciousness.

All of us today live in a self-evident evolving reality. Does it seem at all reasonable that the spiritual realizations gained over 2,000 years ago by sages limited to an earlier phase of human evolution could be applied without revision to our complex modern culture? Certainly not! The facts are clear. The limitations inherent in the Mental consciousness when Buddha and others of that period made their discoveries could not admit of anything higher than a dissolution of the nexus of consciousness which held them in the world. 1. Buddha called his experience of dissolution “Nirvana” - a state of pure Being, equanimity and peace. The Nirvanic realization, we are told, has the quality of an infinite Zero, or Emptiness without form that grants liberation from this so-called ‘illusory world of becoming’.
It is certainly no coincidence that Lao Tze, the Chinese sage who lived around the same time as Buddha expressed his ‘spiritual’ realization in much the same vein calling it, “The Nothing that is All.” We find this same language later on in the teachings of Shankara, founder of the Advaita Vedanta school, who described his realization as ‘Moksha’ or liberation, where one does not feel oneself any longer to be an individual with a name or form, but an infinite, eternal, space-less consciousness. Clearly these extraordinary beings had reached the heights of the mental consciousness available to them at the time but with the continuing evolution of our species for over 2,000 years, new and greater spiritual heights have opened to our view. The Mental has given way to what Sri Aurobindo 2. and his line have called the “Supra-mental”, as Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, 3. Third in that line, explains:

'Supermind is the faculty that is now changing the human being's capacity to observe and measure. What before in both science and spirituality could only be expressed in terms of paradoxes and irreconcilables, can now be perceived in a vastly truer light. Mind indeed deforms the experience when it is used as the highest instrument of perception. And in both approaches Mind has been the tool, with its resultant language, insufficient and inadequate to express the higher reality in anything better than paradoxes. With the advent of Supermind this limitation is no longer felt; and with it comes the perception of the true nature of creation, - in particular with respect to that which moves and hence to time and matter.'
The New Way, Vol . 3, 1983, Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Let us continue for a moment with Buddha’s realization and go more deeply into what it means for the individual and the world. There are two poles of Universal Being, one is Spirit (Purusha) and the other is Matter (Prakriti). The Buddhist view of reality is based upon an irreconcilable split between these two poles and a strategy that that posits one pole, (the Material), as an illusion in order to reach the other. Following Buddha’s realization of "Dukkha" (suffering) as the first great truth, his solution to the dilemma of existence was to seek liberation by declaring the unreality of the world. And this is exactly what Dr. Chopra is advising us to do in his article, …to become detached from the self and realize that the Individual self and the World are an illusion. In a recent interview with Atlantis Rising (May/June 2007) he told the interviewer:

“ I enjoy the illusion of it all. I’m standing in an apartment in New York City on the 69th floor overlooking the city and I know it’s not “real”, but I can appreciate it.”

However much he may enjoy the illusion, this is plainly a life-negating view that has no power to heal the wounds of fragmentation inflicted on our modern world by the reductive linear mind and its nihilistic religious forms. It is simply a continuation of an old patriarchal consciousness that denies the Feminine Goddess principle, Matter and our collective Becoming in favor of a remote static peace that has negated the lives and creative possibilities of hundreds of millions of human beings.

If we take an unvarnished look at what Buddha taught, not the kind of humanism it has morphed into today, it can only be understood as a strategy of escapism based on a denial of the World, the Sacred Feminine and the Human Soul. Sadly this path has found a willing following in many of the world’s religions which teach the faithful that salvation, if it exists at all, may only be found in the transcendence of the world in some after-death Christian ‘Heaven’, Advaitan ‘Moksha’ or ‘Nirvanic’ Void. A contemporary example of this retrograde view may be found in the popular works of Eckhart Tolle who writes:

”…The ultimate purpose of the world lies not within the world but in transcendence of the world.”

Dr. Chopra simply does not understand that when our highest spiritual wisdom declares the world to be meaningless, purposeless, unreal, and irredeemable, these nihilistic perceptions invariably play themselves out in our individual and collective life. This fact is undeniable in the tragic symbolism of children blowing themselves up in the service of fundamentalism based upon the deceitful promise of a paradisiacal afterlife. Likewise, if our earthly existence is conceived as only a meaningless passage to some higher reality then a certain restraint is removed on the unconscionable exploitation of the environment not to mention each other. Surely he cannot deny the overwhelming evidence of a looming environmental and human catastrophe, but who would ever have imagined that it was a direct consequence of these old nihilistic religious beliefs that disenchanted the natural world.

There are numerous other contradictions and points in his article to which I take great exception, particularly his comments on the corrupting influence of Time and his remarks on the human Soul. This is understandable since he espouses a path that seeks the obliteration of Time rather than to know its Power of Integration. But do not be deceived by his comments that Buddha was any kind of ‘physician of the Soul’. His very teachings are the basis of the Soul’s extinction. On this point I bow to Sri Aurobindo who has exposed the flaws of the Nirvanic experience for all time in his epic poem Savitri, Bk. 3; canto 2 – The Adoration of the Divine Mother:

“Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,
Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;
But where hast thou thrown Self's mission and Self's power?
On what dead bank on the Eternal's road?
One was within thee who was self and world,
What hast thou done for his purpose in the stars?
Escape brings not the victory and the crown!
Something thou cam'st to do from the Unknown,
But nothing is finished and the world goes on
Because only half God's cosmic work is done.
Only the everlasting No has neared
And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart:
But where is the Lover's everlasting Yes,
…A huge extinction is not God’s last word.”

Having seen Dr. Chopra interviewed many times, one cannot doubt his heartfelt concern for the suffering of the world. He is indeed a Bodhisattva and an inspiration to millions of people. If Buddhism is Chopra’s chosen path, one can only respect his decision.
At the same time problems in the world are growing worse with each passing day. Solutions elude us because we continue to look to past traditions that negate and divide us instead of embracing a New Way that offers a knowledge that integrates and heals. This situation simply cannot continue.


Robert E. Wilkinson
robtw@sprynet.com

*****
Notes:

1.) In the early centuries of the Piscean Age the consciousness of the race was founded on three rather than four pillars of being. The Physical and Emotional in the service of the Mental. The highest, (Spiritual) was lacking or dormant. The great sages of that era including the Buddha were limited in their higher perceptions by the veil of mind whose nature is to reduce and fragment what spirituality and quantum physics tells us is inherently whole and interdependent. The bicameral mind thinks and sees in terms of polarities and is insufficient and inadequate to express the higher reality in anything better than bi-polar oppositions, paradoxes and irreconcilables such as Time and Eternity, Spirit and Matter, Being and Becoming, Good and Evil and so on. When mind tries to move upward beyond its vibrational limits, it is obliterated in Nirvana which is mistaken as the Spiritual. As Sri Aurobindo explains:

“One does not rise up when one passes into Nirvana, one pierces a hole and goes out. It is not as many believe the ending of the path with nothing beyond to explore, it is the end of the lower path and the beginning of the higher evolution. Nirvana in my consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realisation, a step toward the complete thing.” Sri Aurobindo - Letters on Yoga

2.&3.) Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) is regarded as having made a contribution to human thought the equivalent of which does not seem to have been attained by any other known thinker. Together with the Mother of Pondicherry, he laid down the lines of a new Supramental Yoga which reveals the limitations of the old spirituality and corrects the error of the Buddha. Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea) (1938- ) Third in the Supramental line has brought synthesis and continuity to their yoga. Her work as director of the Aeon Centre of Cosmology has been to unveil a body of applied cosmological knowledge unequalled in it scope and specificity which, for the first time, offers us the tools to heal the schisms of the mental creation and integrate the Spiritual and Material planes. She has carried Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s work to completion, rebuilt the ‘Cosmological Bridge’ lost for millennia and has given us a New and Integral Way to embrace our collective becoming. For more on her evolutionary knowledge see: http://www.aeongroup.com