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The 8th Manifestation covered many thousands of years. Krishna’s appearance
on Earth took place within that Manifestation, during the Age of Taurus
about 6000 years ago from our present Aquarian Age. As of 234 BC, we are
within the 9th Manifestation; and, as in all cases where the
cycle of 9 is involved or somehow prominent, ours is a time of ‘birth’.
That is to say, the prior eight Manifestations the Earth and
her civilisations have experienced were simply the long and laborious ‘gestation’ of this Child that is being born in our very times, in our Manifestation,
and in our own Age of Aquarius.
Nothing of the true, legendary Golden Age could be known before this
age of Birth. Our religions and spirituality, our more mundane advances
in technology, or our ideologies of a political, social and economic order,
have been nothing but a gestation of the ‘foetus’ to reach the critical
moment of Birth in the midst of an attendant labour.
Though cosmic in nature, this has nonetheless been a gestation;
and like all gestations the foetus is covered as it were in veils until
it emerges, and protected by its dark habitat. This means that we have
not yet ‘seen the light’. The Child is only now in this Age of Aquarius
beginning to emerge from the darkness of its cosmic Womb.
The Mahabharat, India’s great epic of the last avataric appearance,
describes conditions the Earth’s civilisations would have to endure surrounding
that Birth. Indeed, we note that darkness fell during that Manifestation
of the sign Scorpio, eighth of the zodiacal twelve. Or better, what had
been until then known as the sign of the Eagle fell to its lower symbolism
and became the lowly and poisonous Scorpion. Until that time, as evidenced
in the world’s oldest sacred text, the Rig Veda, the 8th was
known as the sign of the Eagle. The labour pains of these intervening
6000 years, between the Age of Taurus and our Age of Aquarius, explain
the cosmic process of transforming the lesser symbol to restore the higher.
Until the Age of Taurus in the last 8th Manifestation, men
and women of wisdom were carrying forward a very ancient teaching. During
the previous seven Manifestations, covering approximately 45,000 years,
the full Knowledge was not a part of our evolution as a guide for humanity.
We have only known fragments. In some cases, as we find in Hinduism, those
fragments were and are significant and voluminous. But still they are only
fragments.
However, what was common to all ancient schools was a single cosmic
language and base. It is this foundation that has been preserved and
that constitutes the Eternal Truth, - or the Sanatan Dharma, as
it is known in Hinduism. But it must be clarified that India, like all
other ancient civilisations, lost that Knowledge at about the same time
that this misfortune overtook all the old civilisations across the globe.
It was lost in India to such an extent that none in her contemporary halls
of learning, of either the sacred or the profane, have detected this Script
in the Rig Veda, though it is unmistakably present (see the verses to Vishnu, RV, I, 154); its wisdom permeates the entire text. I have dealt with this
issue in numerous publications, which can be consulted if more details
are desired. I may simply add here that the ancient-most Knowledge is still
alive in India in that it is the only ‘pagan’ country on the planet, in
the fullest dimensions of this Western label. That is, it is the only civilisation
that actively worships the Gods and Goddesses that constitute the cosmic
energies which are related to that same Cosmic Script.
It must be emphasised that there is no nation or civilisation on Earth
today that can be looked upon as a leader on this path to the supreme Light.
Nor are there any schools of wisdom, Vedic or otherwise, that contain this
Knowledge in its undiluted form. All contain only fragments, the Vedas
included, because the Birth of this cosmic cycle of thousands of years
is meant to reinstate a Knowledge that belonged to an earlier round of
77,760 years. Thus, the ruins of ancient civilisations, which so obviously
point to a very different consciousness having inhabited our planet, are
simply means to keep alive the Cosmic Script from generation to generation
in different systems across the globe, and are themselves only fragments.
The civilisations that created these extant fragments never had the full
Knowledge.
Hinduism is a case in point and serves us well as an example. The message
of the Mahabharat, the epic of the Manifestation prior to ours, is that
a great darkness would befall India (and indeed the entire globe). The
Eagle would be replaced by the Scorpion at the end of that Age when, as
the Epic describes, relatives, kinsmen turned on each other, compelled
by complex cosmic imperatives. There was total devastation from a war that
was the mother of all wars. This indicated that India, which was destined
to preserve the sacred thread of that long line of Knowledge, would herself
fall into darkness because after the 8th Manifestation the luminous
Child would be born in the 9th. Indeed, the darkest hour before
the Cosmic Dawn. Only thereafter would the Earth come into the full Light
and fulfil her highest destiny.
India lost the Cosmic Script then, as predicted in the Mahabharat, where
the Eagle became the Scorpion as kin turned upon kin in the most dramatic
and compelling tale of destruction and devastation the world has ever known.
After that cloak of darkness fell, the Script was lost. It returned to
the subcontinent with Greek travellers in the first millennium, it is believed,
as a thing alien and new, though more likely it was India herself that
in previous Manifestations had sent the sacred knowledge with all its symbols
and hieroglyphs beyond her borders.
In India it was as if a great sleep had descended, amnesia of sorts.
But the ‘pagan’ system survived and the knowledge took refuge thereafter
in myth, the language of the soul, where it is still to be found today.
The reason is that the Birth of the 9th Manifestation would
take place in India. For this, the cosmic foundation had to survive in
some manner.
This ‘pagan’ foundation has been uprooted everywhere else on the globe.
There have been numerous attempts by new-age groups to revive this paganism.
For example, by devising rituals in worship of the Mother Goddess; or else
by referring to God as ‘she’ in order to convey a more all-encompassing
belief system, somehow liberated from the constrictions imposed by an immature
patriarchal dogmatism. Many today recognise these limitations to which
survivors of the Sleep are subjected. Yet these attempts are artificial,
mental constructs. They are not born of Knowledge, hence they have no power.
They will therefore change nothing of the old, much less be the harbingers
of the Birth.
In India, however imperfect, we do encounter a truer expression, a real
cosmic connection - though the more complete Knowledge has been lost. This
is noted by the loss of the Divine Measure (of time) without which true
power
cannot attend the Vedic rituals that have been handed down through the
centuries. At this point in time, India stands on the brink of a total collapse into the abyss of the ages; the threat of a complete submergence
in darkness of this only survivor from ancient times is very real. It is
the secret operation beneath the travails our civilisation is experiencing.
In other words, the outer cannot be successful unless the deeper, determining
processes are carried out successfully. That moment of Truth, decisive
and final, is upon us.
There is, however, a specific reason for the cloak of darkness to have
descended after Krishna’s time. Without that deep sleep India could not
give birth to the divine Child. This Manifestation will not produce a creature
pieced together with fragments of the old ways. It is a new Birth.
A new Way. Without that sleep India could not fulfil her destiny
as the ‘womb’ whence the Child would be born.
I am stating in this brief summary that India is the centre of
our 9th Manifestation; and because in the cosmic harmony she represents the soul of the Earth, the final stage of labour pains have
drawn the play-out directly to her shores. This development was foreseen
as early as 1976 - with all its ramifications involving the nuclear dimension
as well. Indeed, as a major component. But ever central to this play-out,
at the root of the entire cosmic birth process lies the question of the
Divine Measure she lost so many centuries ago.
Let us deal now with specific details, pertinent to our own times. This
necessity of ‘sleep’, if it may be so-called, is also reflected in the
fact that the Avatar of the 9th Manifestation, Sri Aurobindo,
spent 12 of his most formative years, from 7 to 21, in England. At the
express wish of his father, he was entirely shielded from any contact with
Hinduism, or even India’s native languages. When he returned to India at
the age of 21, the discovery of his roots began, but within this virgin
soil of his consciousness, as it were. Likewise the Mother and the Third
of the same Line were born and raised in the West. They too brought a virgin
field into the play at the momentous time of the new Birth.
This virgin soil was a fundamental piece in the cosmic design so that
a true new way would take birth on Indian soil, which for millennia
had been nourished by the Sanatan Dharma. Though the Thread was maintained,
her deep slumber did allow for critical encumbrances to accumulate, which
cannot form a part of the New Way and which must now be shed. Only then
can India fulfil her higher destiny.
The analysis thus far can help the reader discover an important feature
of our times, so central a component of the new cosmology. It is that all
the details attending the Birth have been meticulously arranged. There
is a patent control in evidence; but a familiarity with the new
way cosmology is required to be able to follow its mechanisms. Because
of the existence of this controlling power the Birth of our times
presents a cosmos and not chaos. The tragic circumstances
of today can be used as visual examples of this power operating in the
world. The key to this operation is found in the New Way dictum, the
symbol is the thing symbolised.
The appropriately named Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre are a
perfect example of this control, as well as the above-mentioned
dictum. To illustrate, it must be borne in mind that central to everything
that is now transpiring is the collapse of the old. But what exactly is
that oldness, which we realise is crumbling by every headline that appears
in our newspapers, just as the Twin Towers crumbled before our eyes? Succinctly,
it is the end of the Binary Creation. This is what the total collapse and vaporisation of the twin buildings indicates when the symbol
is the thing symbolised.
In 1983-4, a new balance came into being as a result of a realignment
and centering process involving the cosmic forces of contraction
and expansion. To be brief, this set in motion an undermining of
the structure of our world, as it had been evolving for thousands of years.
Our human species is a binary construct; hence it bears all the
limitations attendant on this specific polarity: a central void, because
of which the ego can usurp the commanding position of the soul, while the
sex centre imposes its atavistic drives in place of a ‘higher purpose’.
Examples of the Binary Creation can be found throughout our society, from
its loftiest products to its lowliest. Our justice system is an example
of that Binary Creation. Our morals, our codes of conduct, and even our
wars, are its products. In a word, everything that we know is born of that
binary consciousness. Indeed, everything that now seems threatened with
collapse. This is so because the Binary Creation has come to an end.
At the time of that yogic process of centering and realignment there
was a definite hardening of the structure to the point where some great
nuclear holocaust seemed likely. And yet, we must again refer to that controlling
power because the Binary Creation was protected by the weapons of mass
destruction of its own inventiveness. The two superpowers, the USA and
the USSR, formed an axis of tension that safeguarded the Earth. A nuclear
holocaust could not occur while the structure was binary and balanced
on this pole of tension.
In 1976, the formulas of the New Way were largely completed. On that
basis it was then seen that no such holocaust would come about since the
two-nation system protected the Binary Creation by the tensions that maintained
the structure intact. A very delicate ‘balance’, needless to say. But what
was seen then was that India would be the future centre of the nuclear play-out, whatever that would be. The backdrop for this pre-vision directly
involved the Divine Measure India had lost thousands of years earlier.
This has been the subject of numerous books and articles I have written
over the past 30 years and need not detain us at this point.
Eighteen years ago, through the act of centering and realignment, a
dramatic shift was felt. This yogic process reverberated throughout the
globe, as if the Earth’s subtle axis had been shifted. It produced a precarious
situation and carried the Earth to the brink of her destiny. The world
was entering the final 13.5 years of a 27-year ‘action plan’ that began
in 1971. At the exact midpoint, the end came about of the Binary Creation.
Thus from 1983-4 onward, only a new way, a new structure,
a realignment of forces corresponding to an entirely different formula
could save the planet and her civilisations and carry the world to a new
consciousness and the threshold of a new world.
We must note that immediately following this centering and realignment
of 1983-4, which I had recorded in The New Way, Volume 3, in November
of 1983, events on the world stage confirmed this process. For example,
the collapse of the then USSR and the consequent dismantling of the binary
pole of tension. The ‘purpose’ of the species had changed. It was no longer subservient to a binary compulsion. Rather, a unitary component
had been introduced with a divine Purpose at its core. This means that
no solutions that do not take this factor into account can carry us through
the final stages of the great Labour. Indeed, the Binary Structure has
collapsed just as the Twin Towers indicated. That image of collapse and
vaporisation will be forever engraved in the consciousness of humanity
and will be known someday for what it was: the collapse of the old under
the aegis of an impeccable power of control. In other words, a contained
area within the One Field, at the heart of the old binary system. They
were indeed symbols of America’s economic might whose devastating and almost
instant collapse revealed the fragility of the old balance. Thus, a sacrifice
of some for the salvation of the Earth and a furthering of the birth of
a new world.
This has its repercussions all the way down the line. Our world affairs
will indeed never be the same after 11 September 2001. But we can survive
this passage if knowledge accompanies us, a knowledge informing
us that the Avatar of this 9th Manifestation is Mahakal, or
the Time-Spirit, the great Controller. The Child lives on though in its
infancy as yet. But it nonetheless has the power to bring down the old
merely by its sacred presence on Earth, in the midst of this new Kurukshetra:
‘Europe prides herself on her practical and scientific organisation
and efficiency. I am waiting till her organisation is perfect; then a child
shall destroy her.’
áWhat did Sri Aurobindo mean in his 76th Aphorism? For Europe’s
‘organisation’ indeed seems now to be complete. Is this destruction
as of old, as in the Mahabharat Age, to be followed by a sleep even deeper
than before? Or is this descriptive of a power in its infancy that will
demolish the structures of the Old World and introduce the new? We must
not lose sight of the fact that the New World is leading the Old World
in this perilous passage. Indeed, all the details in this Birth are significant
and sustain the dictum, the symbol is the thing symbolised.
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
at Skambha, Tamil Nadu, India
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