The Inadequacy of Jung's Psychology in the Realization of the Soul

Response to:  David Johnston's - 'Jung’s Psychology of the Living God and Transformation of Individual and Community.'  

Let me begin by saying that David Johnston has made an admirable presentation of the psychology of CG Jung. As I read it, time and again I found myself saying, ‘yes… but’. Many of the concepts employed in Jung’s thought reflect well respected metaphysical propositions some of which touch upon certain Supramental truths but in the final analysis, when Jung’s thought is used in an attempt to clarify the deeper principles of Sri Aurobindo’s, the Mother’s and Thea’s work, it falls miserably short of the goal. To his credit David has included the appropriate caveats that he is not attempting to synthesize the work of Carl Jung and Sri Aurobindo, but my sense is that he believes, as some have written, that Jung's psychology is capable of preparing the ground for the Gnostic experience. In fact it has even been said that the Jungian Individuation is a pointer, a stepping stone to the Aurobindonian transformation. I do not agree with this proposition for a number of reasons but I understand why many of Sri Aurobindo’s devotees would embrace Jung’s work with this expectation, especially those living in the West.

Anyone familiar with Sri Aurobindo’s work will understand that it represents a radical departure from the goal of an old spirituality which sought in its entirety an escape from birth and death through a transcendental experience which dissolved the nexus of consciousness that held the individual in the world. But very few appreciate that the success of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga turns upon that same nexus of consciousness or Soul only realized more profoundly as the foundation and support of the Supermind. In the Vedic age this point or nexus was known as 'Skambha' (the 'pillar', 'support') of the Veda and it was considered to be the Supreme Principle or ‘fulcrum of creation’ but with the advent of a transcendental spirituality bent on escape from a so-called illusory world of becoming, knowledge of ‘Skambha’ fell into obscurity and was soon considered irrelevant. No one since the Vedic Age has actually realized Skambha but we find mention of its supreme importance in the writings of the renowned Indian guru Ram Chandra. In his Complete Works, in a chapter entitled “The Final State”, Ram Chandra writes of the final stage of yogic practice:

“the final approach…where we are nearest to the Super-active Center, or Zero, which is the primeval cause of the entire manifestation. …This can best be expressed as the state of Tam – “no light and no darkness.” This is what takes us along now and there is no end to it. We may go on and on but this will remain with us forever. If there be a great soul of caliber who may be able to comprehend what lies beyond, he may be able to discover that there is a point, rather a ring, there. The conception of a ring around a centre is indispensable. Such a one as is capable of having an experience of the central point is very rarely born. Still let me reveal something about it. Suppose there be such a great soul in existence who wishes to discover what exists within, tries to peep into the ring around which all the powers of Nature originate, then he is pushed back from it. Anyhow, if after undergoing all shocks he is finally able to make out something of it then words would fail to express it. This is the final limit of human approach and none so far has been able to go beyond. Advancement even up to this point is well nigh impossible”

In this extraordinary passage, Ram Chandra confirms that the realization of what he calls ‘Tam’ is well nigh impossible. That such a one as is capable of having an experience of this central point is rarely born. For me his statement parallels the statement of the Mother when she wrote that, ‘… 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… and this is the work of the Avatar...’ But what few have understood is that ‘adding one more step’ was not just limited to Sri Aurobindo’s realization of the Supermind. Each of the members of the Solar Line, Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Thea, have realized what heretofore has been considered impossible or unattainable. For Sri Aurobindo it was the transcendent heights of the Supermind, exceeding Krishna’s Overmental consciousness. For the Mother it was the highest realization of the Cosmic Divine and its expression in Her Vedic temple as the greatest feat of sacred architecture ever conceived. And for Thea, it is the realization of the Soul, Skambha, the sacred ‘Point’ whose attainment Ram Chandra reserved for the rarest of individuals. It is this very same Point that is expressed in the translucent globe that captures the descending light of the Supreme in the Mother’s Inner Chamber.

This extraordinary realization is recorded in Thea’s book, The New Way, Volume 3. She made the following comments on that realization for the Vishaal Study Group on 26 September, 2006: 

‘As most of you know, the essence of my contribution to the work of the Solar Line has been that POINT and penetration into a special ‘zone’ where alignment can come into being. … Ram Chandra had attained something solid of the ancient Way, and knew it to be that. But he held that one could not enter that Point. He got to its portals – what he calls the ‘ring’ (around the Point – which of course describes the symbol of the Sun, the Supermind). He held that one could not enter that tam, as he called it – or darkness, absolute ‘ignorance’, or unknowing; actually it is the Absoluteness of Immanence; and he himself never did. He got to its portals, but since he did not go into the Point, he did not find the Golden Seed which that darkness hides; as Sri Aurobindo explained it, the Sun of Light, the luminous Zero, not emptiness but Light. Not having the Supermind, he could not make that passage. But he knew that was IT. How extraordinary. The most remarkable ‘coincidence’ is that the supreme realisation I had and which began on 17 April 1983, is what Ram Chandra-ji stated was only for very rare individuals. Two days later he left his body, 19 April 1983.’

In the November 1969 Agenda (at age 91) the Mother confirmed the utmost importance of this realization writing that '...this new world is nothing other than a rapid convergence upon the knowledge of the point and the whole (i.e. the One and the Many).‘The whole is brought with lightening speed toward the consciousness that will be this Consciousness of the point and the whole at the same time.’

For those of us who appreciate the indispensable role of the Soul as the solid foundation of the Supermind, it is patently obvious that Carl Jung’s discoveries, grounded as they are in the old Anatmic schools of dissolution, do not even approach being able to provide the inner alignment that Sri Aurobindo insists be sought out first before any ascension into vertical dimensions can begin:

“FIRST, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being (Soul) and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts.” Sri Aurobindo - Letters on Yoga, December 2, 1946, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, India, 1946, Planes and Parts of the Being. p. 251

In the final analysis, I am compelled to agree with Sri Aurobindo who described psychology, including Jung’s, as, ‘…an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude, which has the universal habit of the human mind to take partial or local truths, generalize them unduly and try to explain the whole field of human nature in its narrow terms.’  In fact, the only reason Jung is mentioned at all in conjunction with Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is through a misguided attempt by some to fill the void left by Auroville’s rejection of Thea as the Third member of the Solar Line. This inappropriate substitution has been a predictable failure given the lack of realization among the Auroville elite.

The Lack of Yogic Progress in Auroville

The lack of progress in the yoga described by Raman Reddy in his recent posting to Aurora Mirabilis Blogspot* is an unfortunate but predictable situation. What else would you expect when the Auroville elites refuse even to consider two thirds of the yogic formula given forth as an aid to securing the Integral Realization. Having rejected the contributions of the Cosmic and Individual powers of the Supramental Line, they are left with only the Transcendent realization and virtually no way to achieve it. Simply put, they have locked themselves out of the house of the Spirit and have thrown away the KEYS to the Kingdom. Perhaps they should re-consider what Sri Aurobindo wrote about this path of yoga:

“…The distinction between the Transcendental, the Cosmic, the Individual Divine is not my invention, nor is it native to India or to Asia -- it is, on the contrary, a recognised European teaching current in the esoteric tradition of the Catholic Church where it is the authorised explanation of the Trinity, -- Father, Son and Holy Ghost…
In the practice of yoga there is a great dynamic difference in one's way of dealing with these three possible realisations. If I realise only the Divine as that, not my personal self, which yet moves secretly all my personal being and which I can bring forward out of the veil, or if I build up the image of that Godhead in my members, it is a realisation but a limited one. If it is the Cosmic Godhead that I realise, losing in it all personal self, that is a very wide realisation, but I become a mere channel of the universal Power and there is no personal or divinely individual consummation for me. If I shoot up to the transcendental realisation only, I lose both myself and the world in the transcendental Absolute. If, on the other hand, my aim is none of these things by itself, but to realise and also to manifest the Divine in the world, bringing down for the purpose a yet unmanifested Power, -- such as the supermind, -- A HARMONISATION OF ALL THREE BECOMES IMPERATIVE. I have to bring it down, and from where shall I bring it down -- since it is not yet manifested in the cosmic formula -- if not from the unmanifest Transcendence, which I must reach and realise? I have to bring it into the cosmic formula and, if so, I must realise the cosmic Divine and become conscious of the cosmic self and the cosmic forces. BUT I HAVE TO EMBODY IT HERE, -- OTHERWISE IT IS LEFT AS AN INFLUENCE ONLY AND NOT A THING FIXED IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD, AND IT IS THROUGH THE DIVINE IN THE INDIVIDUAL ALONE THAT THIS CAN BE DONE.”          Sri Aurobindo, -- Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22/24, p. 509-10


Indeed, the Individual SOUL is the KEY to the Integral Realization. It must be sought out FIRST and established as the proper foundation before any ascension into vertical dimensions can begin. As Sri Aurobindo explains:

“FIRST, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being (Soul) and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts.” Sri Aurobindo - Letters on Yoga, December 2, 1946, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, India, 1946, Planes and Parts of the Being. p. 251

But how is this ‘conversion inwards’ to the Psychic Being or Soul to be achieved? What kind of yogic process would take us on this inner spiral, this centripetal movement into a ‘center that holds’? Is there perhaps a cosmological formula given out by the Vedic Rishis that might give us access to these hidden dimensions within? Yes of course, says Sri Aurobindo:

‘It is when the nine-months’ sacrifice is prolonged through the tenth, it is when the Navagwas become the ten Dashagwas by the seven-headed thought of Ayasya, the tenth Rishi, that the Sun is found… but what is meant by the figure of the months? For it now becomes clear that it is a figure, a parable; the year is symbolic, the months are symbolic. It is in the revolution of the year that the recovery of the lost Sun and the lost cows is effected, for we have the explicit statement in X.62-2… “by the truth, in the revolution of the year, they broke Vala”…’

‘The expression in the hymns, daso maso ataran, indicates that there was some difficulty in getting through the full period of ten months. It is during this period apparently that the sons of darkness had the power to assail the sacrifice; for it is indicated that it is only by the confirming of the thought which conquers Swar, the solar world, that the Rishis are able to get through the ten months…’

‘I hold for you in the waters the thought that wins possession of heaven by which the Navagwas [nine] passed through the ten months…’ (V.45-11)

‘This victory is won in twelve periods of the upward journey, represented by the revolution of the twelve months of the sacrificial year, the periods corresponding to the successive dawns of a wider and wider truth, until the tenth month secures the victory…What may be the precise significance of the nine rays and the ten is a more difficult question which we are not yet in a position to solve.’   Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, 1915.

The fact of the matter is that Sri Aurobindo never did solve this question because it was not in the job description of the Transcendent Divine to unveil the particulars of the Individual SOUL. It is exclusively the work of the Individual Divine who has given out in impeccable detail the Vedic formulas for the realization of the Soul or Psychic Being. Of course the Auroville elites have rejected out of hand anything Thea has to say on the matter. As Paulette declares:

“I refuse to read anything coming from Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, Wilkinson or their few associates… and I have been instructed by the Auroville Working Committee, as well by the Auroville Outreach Media, not to entertain with such people any discussion whatsoever, on any topic.”

Preferring an intractable ignorance to the Keys to the 'Future Realization', Paulette and those she presumes to lead will wander aimlessly in the pursuit of a yogic ideal that they cannot possibly attain. She has provided us with an excellent example of this confusion in her postings to the ‘Mirror of Tomorrow’ and ‘Aurora Mirabilis’ blogs where she discusses what she believes to be her realization of the Soul or ‘Psychic Being’. In these postings, entitled ‘I was left free to grow at my own pace and rhythm’, Paulette has put herself forward as an authority on these matters presumably to promote her books and guide others on the path of realization. But from what she writes, it is clearly evident that whatever she has realized, beyond her own imaginings, is NOT the Psychic Being and will only add further confusion to the Auroville and Ashram communities. It is yet another example of the blind leading the blind straight into the ditch of an erroneous and impotent orthodoxy.


Raman Reddy's posting to Aurora Mirabilis Blogspot:  http://auroramirabilis.blogspot.com/2009/11/barin-ghose-dilip-kumar-roy-and-anna.html#comment-form

Stop Scapegoating Peter Heehs

Alok Pandey’s thoughtful article about the Heehs imbroglio brought up a number of important points but his burning questions about HOW and WHY this dispute occurred in the first place remain unanswered. To understand the HOW and WHY behind the Heehs controversy, one must be willing to stop the scapegoating and go deeper into the origins of the ignorance and confusion from which Heehs' literary heresy came into being.

Since the Mother’s departure in 1973 both Auroville and the Ashram have suffered and continue to experience the eroding effect of incompetent leadership. Instead of forming around a common Soul and a Supramental knowledge, which was the Mother’s avowed intention, Auroville and the Ashram have formed around a Collective Ego. Instead of a true spiritual community guided by Realized Beings, the seat of Sri Aurobindo’s work was taken over by the Indian government and is now run by Philosophers and Politicians who, the Mother warned us, would be the very last to be transformed. This is the polluted soil from which Heehs' book emerged and the noxious influence that nursed his iconoclastic attitude.

The most important causal factor behind the Heehs’ controversy, completely absent from these discussions, and apparently quite unknown to Alok and others, is the existence of and the occult effect of a true collective Center or Soul. In the parlance of the Integral Yoga it is called the ‘Psychic Being’. It is the ordering and unifying principle of any collectivity and if it were truly present in the Auroville and Ashram community, the bitter controversies, legal disputes and polarization of devotees upon racial and other lines would have been a virtual impossibility. The community of devotees would know this if they had bothered to acquire a direct lived experience of the Yoga and the Vedic ‘Skambha’ instead of the lifeless mental orthodoxy that has been offered in its place. Indeed, one need only look at the ongoing disharmony and chaos in Auroville and the Ashram to know TO A CERTAINTY that there is NO CENTER. William Butler Yeats, himself a realized being, eloquently describes this occult phenomenon in the first lines of his poem, ‘The Second Coming’.

‘…Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.’

You could not find a better description of how Alok Pandey and others have experienced Peter Heehs’ destructive influence but what they fail to realize is that Heehs is not the CAUSE of this ongoing controversy but merely one of the SYMPTOMS of the CENTERLESS condition that exists today in Auroville and the Ashram. To someone who SEES, the situation and its errors have an almost formulaic precision to it producing a mathematical result when something essential is left out of the mix. It may be compared to G.W.H. Hegel’s famous three part dialectical formula known as Hegel’s law. If you apply the principles of Thesis and Antithesis but reject the Third principle of Synthesis, the formula is fractured, true unity cannot be achieved and an integral understanding becomes impossible.

The same principles apply to the Supramental formula. Sri Aurobindo explained to us that the Divine is not only Transcendent but also Cosmic and finally Individual – Purusha, Prakriti and the Individual Soul. Its power and force must be brought down into the world in order to effect any real transformation in the earth-consciousness. As we know, Sri Aurobindo’s work dealt exclusively with the Transcendent Plane. The Mother’s work and her Vedic Temple is an incomparable translation of the Occult-Cosmic Plane. But it isn’t until you get to the Third Level and Thea’s work that you come upon the Synthesizing principle of the Psychic Being or Individual Soul. Naturally her field is represented in the Mother’s temple architecture as the GLOBE or CENTER of the entire structure that unites the Transcendent and Cosmic planes in an integral perfection. But as we know, the Philosophers and Politicians who rule Auroville and the Ashram have rejected the Third along with her knowledge of the Mother’s Inner Chamber. As a consequence, they have consigned themselves and innocent students like Alok to a partial, dis-integrated and order-less mental dogma which cannot be brought down and applied in the earth-field. Through this disgraceful and deliberate act of omission, the usurpers in Pondicherry have reduced Sri Aurobindo’s work to what he called ‘a pompous farce’.

In my opinion, Alok has unfairly placed the Heehs’ controversy at the feet of the Ashram trustees who he believes chose to ignore the signs of an impending disaster. He does so while crediting others like Amal Kiran, and R Y Deshpande for raising a timely alarm. But what he fails to understand is that they too are complicit, if not more so, in creating the long-standing foundations of this problem. I have discussed Amal Kiran’s shameful behavior in another article* so I will not repeat my comments here. But I would like to extend this discussion of a Soulless Centerless cosmos to R Y Deshpande and his Mirror of Tomorrow blog. Here again we find with mathematical precision, the cause of the errors and shortcomings in Deshpande’s commentaries on Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri. For what is Savitri but a story of IMMORTALITY and the SOUL? How on earth can anyone presume to put themselves forward as an authority on Savitri without a lived experience of the Soul and the Vedic scriptures upon which this epic is based? Absent this, Deshpande’s authoritative musings and imaginings of Sri Aurobindo’s poetic verses are simply misleading speculations which serve only to divert the students’ attention from the real and essential purpose of this epochal work. Moreover, because he presents only a dismembered or partial view of the line of Supramental descent from the Transcendent to Cosmic, leaving out entirely the Individual Soul, Deshpande consolidates the erroneous view that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother failed in their mission. It cannot be otherwise. As Thea explains:

‘It is a fact that every publication issued from Ashram and Auroville sources, Heehs’ included, passes on to the public – though the intention appears to be other – that both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother failed in their missions. Not one publication can factually prove otherwise; and since there is no one in your circles who can state the contrary and receive the accepted ‘imprimatur’, this is the result: both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother failed ‘to deliver’. Or if they did, we mortals are not qualified to prove what stands beyond human comprehension. And since this is your belief, you must accept full responsibility for spreading the idea that they seemed to have failed.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Not only did they complete their missions, they did so beyond our wildest expectations. You can be sure that Supermind would not leave the fulfillment of its descent and establishment on Earth to the ‘belief’ of anyone: it is its own irrefutable proof.
This has been fully documented, the only existing book [The New Way] to not only prove the victorious completion of their missions but also it is the only irrefutable documentation of the fact that they are Vishnu’s Emanations – i.e., Evolutionary Avatars who come yuge, yuge, just as the Gita states, proven as only the Truth-Consciousness can do.’ Thea, Letter to the Board of Trustees, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, December 26, 2008.

This then is the HOW and WHY that eludes Alok Pandey and others who concentrate on the EFFECTS instead of the CAUSE. If they are ever to resolve the underlying problem, they must embrace the Third and the SOUL within which She is. Only then will their vision clear to reveal the true meaning of Sri Aurobindo's birth and rebirth as the apotheosis so exquisitely described in his epic poem.

Robert E. Wilkinson

*AuroExpose - Reflections on the emerging 'Aurobindonian Orthodoxy', it consequences, its antidote, Robert E. Wilkinson, April 2006 - http://www.quantumyoga.org/AuroExpose.htm

Alok Pandey’s original article may be found at: http://seof.blogspot.com/2009/10/trustees-chose-to-ignore-this-issue-and.html

Reply to Barindranath Chaki's - Sri Aurobindo and Avatarhood 1

Who does Barindranath Chaki think he is? What lapse of intellectual integrity allows him to believe for one instant that he is qualified to make such pompous pronouncements about Sri Aurobindo’s Avatarhood and the conditions that the Supermind would employ in the process of his rebirth? This is one of the most outrageous examples of ignorance masquerading as authority I have ever seen. But unfortunately it is typical of what passes for realization in the Integral Yoga community. It is patently obvious that Chaki has no direct experience of what he claims. He has merely cherry-picked some quotations (with no citations) that appear to support his misguided premise and cobbled them together in what he believes to be a compelling argument. But to the discriminating eye, his presentation is factually flawed, wildly contradictory and worst of all, bears no relation at all to what the Avatar IS and the PURPOSE of his manifestation at this particular time in human history. He is as if seeing through a straw, seizing a fragment of an integral whole and completely misrepresenting its meaning and purpose within the larger context of Sri Aurobindo’s work and mission. Instead of sticking to facts, Chaki goes spinning off into the same kind of hyperbolic rant popularized by Tusar Mohapatra, that Sri Aurobindo is beyond all concept, system and order. He is beyond the Gods, beyond the Veda and beyond even his own Avatarhood. What we are left with are Chaki’s fanciful and romanticized notions about the actions of the Supermind and his proffer of the Mother’s speculative comments on Sri Aurobindo’s rebirth which even she cautions not to take as the final word. Chaki’s specious claims about Sri Aurobindo’s rebirth might be compared to a pompous student arguing points with a professor of Calculus, when the student himself has never even bothered to master the principles of elementary Mathematics. The result in both cases is a pretentious and dogmatic assertion of one’s ignorant and uninformed opinion in the face of incontrovertible fact.

In mathematics there is a kind of foundational order, basic elements that you build upon to erect a sound structure of knowledge. The same is true with regard to the Supermind and the way it deploys itself in the material creation. This basic formulaic expression by which the Supermind may be Seen and Measured is called Sanatana Dharma, the ETERNAL Truth. The keys to this eternal Super-logic that reveal the exact timing of Vishnu’s emanations and the dates and purpose of their births may only be discovered in the Vedic scriptures. Thus Sri Aurobindo declares to us that, ‘the Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge; the Veda will remain its end… the Veda remains to us our Rock of the Ages, our ETERNAL FOUNDATION.’ . How then can Chaki reject both the Veda and Vishnu’s Dasavatars as old and limited concepts? Will he explain to us his private revelation of the Veda and its shortcomings or are we to simply take his word on it because he claims to have no vested interest in this matter? It is time to agree with Sri Aurobindo that an INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE IS THE PATH OF OUR YOGA, not the fanciful speculations of naysayers like Chaki, not the hyperbolic rhetoric of inflated and immature followers that cannot offer real and verifiable facts in support of their claims, only Veda - KNOWLEDGE will suffice. Those who have it will unanimously agree that the Mother’s last word on Sri Aurobindo’s rebirth was contained in the sacred dimensions of her Vedic temple, objective measurements that exclude any possibility of mental speculation about the method and timing of his return to earth. But of course Chaki has rejected that along with the Veda and Sri Aurobindo’s Avatarhood and yet still has the gall to claim he is serving the Truth. This is precisely how Sri Aurobindo’s work gets reduced to what he called a pompous farce*.

*‘A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the “religions” and is the reason of their failure.’
— Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, pp. 375–376.

Robert E. Wilkinson

Original article:  http://allchoice-barin.blogspot.com/2009/10/sri-aurobindo-and-avatarhood-1.html

THE EMERGING COSMOS

by
Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

"At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis
in which is concealed a choice of its destiny."
Sri Aurobindo

The malaise of our civilisation is not an inchoate or unpredictable development. Rather, it is the logical, foreseeable result of thousands of years of partial and ineffective spiritual visions and incomplete philosophical systems. These have always been the driving force behind the evolution of higher mental forms. Therefore, if our civilisation stands at a critical juncture at present, it is not in the secular and scientific domain that we must search for the cause of the decay. We must discover what has been lacking in the dimension of existence that moulds the more external and material patterns which condition life on this planet.
Once the root of the problem is located in its true area of causation, necessarily a change must be introduced in that sphere before the more external levels can be influenced. Thus if we can locate the root cause of the decay in that more essential domain, our task of bringing about a change in the individual and in society and of establishing a new world order on Earth is greatly facilitated.
Indeed, the crux of the problem lies here: for thousands of years sages, saints, yogis, philosophers, and men and women of wisdom have described the purpose of birth on this planet as simply a passage to a reality beyond not only our planetary home but entirely out of the cosmic dimension. The course our civilisation has taken can therefore be directly connected to this factor. The influence a vision of this nature has wielded has been devastating--for it has carried the planet and its multiple societies to the brink of total annihilation.
We may call this development a conspiracy of the spiritual elite which gradually influenced the whole tenure of life on Earth, spreading its tentacles of influence through religions and philosophical systems during the past several thousands of years, but now through scientific, political and socioeconomic systems. The latter can invariably trace their inspiration to some spiritual or philosophical source. For even our most material ideologies that apparently deny the higher realities of existence and focus entirely on the physical dimension, have done so by virtue of a reaction to those more metaphysical postulations.
Many profound thinkers throughout the world have perceived that it is only a spiritual renaissance that can save our civilisation. Only if we attain a different consciousness, rooted in some higher seeing, can there be any real change, they feel. This may well be true, but what is not appreciated is that the present chaos is a direct outcome of our past mystic and spiritual perceptions. There are two aspects to this development. One is the course spirituality took in the West, which founded itself on a certain form of negation of life; and the other is the Eastern orientation, in its own way equally a denial of life.
In the West, out of denial and suffering there developed a certain strength. Believers had been encouraged to accept suffering as a way to God and the means to attain a heaven beyond this life. Indeed, life on Earth came to be considered a prison and the fall of the soul. Salvation, through negation of life, could only come in a beyond, namely in some transcendent Heaven. The final outcome of this negation has been the materialistic philosophies and political ideologies which the West has given to the world. Presently there is a clear dichotomy on the planet, whereby western civilisation has aligned itself clearly and decisively with what has come to be called in spiritual circles the 'materialistic consciousness'.
However, in the East we find a similar denial of life, also as an outcome of its spirituality. Interestingly, this negation took hold of the consciousness of eastern wisemen at about the same time that a similar denial caught hold of their western counterparts. About the end of the first millennium Indian spirituality veered fully toward a quest for otherworldliness: the philosophies of the day made the conclusive proclamation that all creation in matter was an 'illusion', a deceptive veil that seekers of Truth must tear through in order to reach the immutable, immobile, transcosmic and static Brahman; or a Self devoid of all relations in this material web of time and space.

Thus at approximately the same period in history, the stamp of otherworldliness and denial of life and the planet's own truth of being and purpose as a home of an evolving species, became firm pillars of our civilisation. This conditioned everything. This denial coloured all our perceptions and gradually moulded every pattern we evolved for the regulation of our individual and collective life. And what we are faced with today is simply the ultimate display of that denial and negation of life. The human being has carried the formula of this negation to its fullest extremes: What was seen as the highest spiritual poise has been carried over to the material realm, or the stage upon which all the ideals and more ethereal concepts of humankind are played out; with the predictable result that now science has furnished the race with the ultimate powers for its own destruction. If the only purpose of life on this planet is to escape it somehow, never more to return, then we are wholly justified in seeking means to destroy this springboard base as the ultimate and conclusive 'solution'.

It is important to see clearly that the root of this problem is directly connected to the religious dogmas and spiritual visions that have conditioned our living since time immemorial. Spirituality is not a static expression. It has evolved pari passu with the material evolution. In fact, there is only ONE evolution, one principle evolving through the myriad forms that constitute our world. This 'consciousness' has two facets, material and spiritual. But both respond to the same underlying energy and drive.

Consequently, to posit the ultimate solution in either the spirituality we know today or in materialism, with its own brand of denial of life, is inadequate. Indeed, such attempts have consistently failed. Spirituality can only offer old solutions which were themselves largely the causes of the decay. Likewise, materialistic answers are prisoners of the same insufficiencies; and continuing as we are, they will drive us to a total destruction in order to play out the drama of denial of life that spirituality has constantly espoused in one form or another, under one disguise or another.

To accurately assess the situation it is required that we examine the problem deeply, in an effort to reach the core of the matter and discover the fount from which both science and spirituality receive their driving force. Therefore, it is necessary to perceive what stands behind the play of forces; and to do so we must come to a more enlightened understanding of the evolutionary process itself. This will provide us with a more holistic assessment of the condition of the highest instrument nature makes use of for the purpose of the evolution of the species, in order to effect this upward march to ever better forms of consciousness and life: the mental human being.

For this is the self-evident purpose of evolution. It is to bring forth evermore perfect forms in order to create more complex and sophisticated networks or patterns of structured energy that can express more harmonious states of consciousness-being. Our present stage is merely one step along the evolutionary way, albeit a decisive one. We have reached a major evolutionary turning point. There is a choice: Before us lies a totally new way of life and by consequence a new world order. For this, a finer, more refined instrument has to manifest. And this is the major focus of the present crisis. We are in the process of evolving a human instrument capable of sustaining the greater cosmic forces at play through life and matter on this planet, without experiencing destructive collapse of energies or succumbing to the old ways of escape through outdated solutions and methods the world has known until now.

The human instrument as it is presently constituted pivots a void. At its centre lies a 'black hole' into which energies collapse, cave in, dissolve; resulting ultimately in decay and death. And out of this condition of the instrument ,through which the human consciousness perceives the reality beyond, came the projection of a world in chaos and collapse and hence the perception that salvation, of whatever order and under whatever guise, lay beyond this material universe and, above all, away from this woeful planet Earth. The demon of the drama was seen to be the senses, which wisemen understood to be the limiting factor which distorts a reality that somehow could be disconnected from the body and experienced separately, free from our physical organs of perception and hence disengaged from the world of material creation, out of which and within which these senses have evolved. Thus, ways were devised to liberate the seeker from the physical, sensual instrument, limited by its own apparently untransformable insufficiencies.

To be more specific, such projections and perceptions of our condition are the logical outcomes of a species ill-poised, but for reasons quite different than those given in current religious, mystic and spiritual explanations. The human being has an off-centre pivot of his bodily instrument, which results in a distorted perception of our world; but which is, paradoxically, caused by the perception itself. Consequently, to alter that perception it is required that concurrently we shift this axis of being--in the species--and allow evolution to carry us to a new and higher destiny.

The human instrument, an intrinsic part of the solar system and the universal harmony, is structured energy just as any other microcosmic or macrocosmic body. The human being has its 'axis' also, around which the individual frame is organised and because of which a separate entity can come into existence and sustain itself without dispersion, adding to this magnificent display of multiplicity within unity, which is the key feature of our material world. But because we are as yet merely a transitional species, albeit evolving to a higher form, the present 'axis' and its location within the body, which has come into being in accordance with certain evolutionary laws, encourages atavism as the single most important driving force of the species.

Over the ages, wisemen, philosophers, seers, mystics, have sought through various means to alter this condition. In place of the inertia of atavism they have sought to install a higher purpose. But the inadequate condition of the instrument through which perception is made, provided only a partial understanding of the problem; and hence the techniques which were devised in order to help the human being to find release from this limiting function were in themselves inconclusive and did nothing to alter in any way conditions on the planet. Matters progressively worsened, until finally, seeing the gravity of the situation, all those who in some way have been concerned with this problem, came to a dramatic impasse. Finding that it was apparently impossible to change this evolutionary determinism, all spiritual and religious paths proffered methods of escape from the 'coils of this corruptible flesh' as the only way to salvation, and to seek dissolution of the consciousness in a transcendent Beyond or a nirvanic Void. Not only has this done nothing to change conditions on Earth, it has complicated the task of discovering the solution. And finally we find ourselves, as a species, facing possible annihilation.

Let us demonstrate the subtle ways in which this notion of irredeemability has penetrated the thinking of even those philosophers whom one would expect to perceive the position differently, primarily because they are indefatigably engaged in the task of instructing men and women the world over on the ways to a better life. But a better life where? If it is here, on this planet, then the flaws that emerge in these teachings must be pointed out, which will serve to expose the fact that on the basis of just such erroneous visions the human condition is what it is and cannot hope to change. Rather, the condition becomes compounded.

To illustrate, we may quote a statement of one of the most eminent thinkers of our times, the late J. Krishnamurti:

'Truth cannot be exact. What can be measured is not truth.'
(Krishnamurti's Notebook, Harper & Row, 1976, p.24.)

This declaration is sure to appeal to all those who have become disenchanted with life in the body and in the material universe of which measure is the salient feature, and who have subsequently posited the goal of their quests in some extra-cosmic heaven or transcendent Beyond. For, what is Krishnamurti really stating?

It is simply this: the higher reality is not of this world, measurable in time and space, and any such attempt to find truth within this material (measurable) universe is futile. Hence this statement is a denial of life and fosters a totally divisive consciousness (certainly not the aim of his teaching efforts on the surface), whereby truth is OUTSIDE of time and space and hence beyond our world. God, the supreme Reality, or Truth is not, according to Krishnamurti, found in what is measurable.

It is this sort of postulation that has carried us to the point of such a tremendous evolutionary crisis. And lamentably, it is men and women concerned preeminently with the spiritual well-being of humankind who have contributed most to this situation, either by encouraging the faithful to live rightly and morally--but only for the purpose of reaching 'heaven' after death; or else by subtly and more often unknowingly, as in the case of Krishnamurti, consolidating the perception of an untransformable, irredeemable material creation, into which the soul and spirit of the human being has fallen and out of which some form of escape must be found in order to know truth in its transcendent, pristine and uncontaminated purity.

Krishnamurti, provides us with another example of the way in which this vision has permeated the intelligentsia, in quarters that one could not have anticipated. Of late two books have appeared with transcripts of his conversations with the physicist David Bohm. It is interesting to observe that Krishnamurti succeeds in carrying Bohm, a physicist and hence a person supremely trained in the art of Measure, into his vision of a featureless void, in which time is an illusion and there is no becoming. A portion of their conversation will suffice to illustrate the nature of the problem:
JK: I am asking you as a physicist, is this universe based on time?

DB: I would say no, but you see, the general way...

JK: That is all I want. You say no! And can the brain, which has evolved in time ... ?

DB: Well, has it evolved in time? Rather, it has become entangled in time. Because the brain is part of the universe, which we say is not based on time.

JK: I agree.

DB: Thought has entangled the brain in time.

JK: All right. Can that entanglement be unraveled, freed, so that the universe is the mind? You follow? If the universe is not of time, can the mind, which has been entangled in time, unravel itself and so be the universe?

And further on, Krishnamurti makes this revealing statement:

'...to be free of becoming? That is the root of it. To end becoming...Of course, there is only complete security in nothingness!' (The Ending of Time, Harper & Row, 1985.)

This clearly, is the perception that must change if at all a new species and a new world order can safely take their place upon the planet for which they are destined. This calls for a complete readjustment in the 'lens of our seeing', precisely our 'instrument of measure', whereby the Earth comes into focus not as some eternal, irredeemable Hell that a chastising Creator has condemned us to, but rather the planet that serves a noble purpose in the cosmic order. This purpose is to evolve continuously higher and better forms of life. At present the human being is in transition toward a new condition. The breakdown we witness about us, inclusive of the marvels of technology that the human mind has brought into being, is an indication of that new order that is arising. The axis of the human instrument is being encouraged to shift to a higher pivot, whereby the present atavism is no longer a rigid cross to which we are nailed as a race. Rather, the new species is liberated from this compelling drive and begins then a more conscious participation in this grand act of Becoming through which a new instrument is being wrought. But for this to occur, the orientation of our quest and its consequent goal, based on a truly new perception of the higher reality of existence, must shift. The direction must cease to be otherworldly, no matter how camouflaged this may be, as noted by the example furnished above. The answer lies here, on Earth, in the body--but transformed by the power of a new seeing.

How is this achieved? The new axis is not metaphysical. It is a pivot that comes into being in accordance with precise evolutionary laws involving time. By working with time in a particular manner, it is possible to restructure the consciousness, and ultimately the physical being, around a higher pivot. This cannot be accomplished while religions and the old spirituality block the process by emphasis on a metaphysical experience that disengages the human being from any spiritually and materially meaningful contact with the physical world, and consequently absolves him from any responsibility therein. According to these now outdated ways, the purpose of life was to somehow find escape from it, to either expiate one's sins and reach heaven, or to work out a karma and thereby become freed from taking birth again on this woeful planet. In the midst of such a conditioning, it was not possible to alter the evolutionary pattern, insofar as the means to do so, in particular a conscious work with time, were denied their truth and the part they played to attain a higher reality.

The new world is a world in which both the being and the becoming are harmonised in the vision. Therefore Sri Aurobindo describes the choice of destiny that faces mankind at this crisis point as an accepting and embracing precisely of the becoming, as the means to attain the ultimate apotheosis, an evolutionary leap to a totally new status:

The significance of our existence here determines our destiny: that destiny is something
that already exists in us as a necessity and a potentiality, the necessity of our being's secret and emergent reality, a truth of its potentialities that is being worked out; both, though not yet realised, are even now implied in what has been already manifested.If there is a Being that is becoming, a Reality of existence that is unrolling itself in Time, what that being, that reality secretly is is what we have to become, and so to become is our life's significance.
(The Life Divine, Chapter 28.)

While the old degenerates into chaos and begins its collapse, there is simultaneously a work in progress to evolve a new species. The process entails, however, a laying of correct foundations. That is, a new 'blueprint' is being evolved, the lines of which are drawn by time, the power of evolution for the gestation of any new form.

The new 'blueprint' being established at present is a pattern of harmony. Indeed, its inspirer is the closest, most complete pattern of harmony that we can observe and of which we are an intrinsic part. It is the solar system--seen with a new eye and an entirely new and different instrument of perception and measurement. This blueprint of a new consciousness-being will provide the basis for a new world order. The outcome is a planetary society, inspired in its governance by the very harmonics of our System and in particular founded upon a vision that sees and accepts the Earth as the place where upon this progression is destined to occur.

But foremost in this evolutionary leap is the question of the purpose of evolution; and by consequence the purpose of our planetary home within the scheme of the cosmic order. It is clear that while we continue to turn to the old spirituality for solutions to our present state of collapse, we are only compounding that collapse, insofar as all spirituality considers life in this cosmos to be a fall and posits salvation in some form of a Beyond, unevolving and static. The dramatic shift that is required is then the complete refocusing of the lens we are provided with for evolution on Earth, and the resultant consciousness that introduces an entirely new direction in our perceiving. We cease to deny life and material creation as channels for expression of the highest truth principle. Rather, we see these as instruments on Earth of what Sri Aurobindo has called, the 'life divine'.

There is a tested method to establish this new blueprint. It utilises time as the creative power for this revolutionary activity. By a specific knowledge of the mechanics of our solar system and the relation of the planetary harmony to time, as experienced on Earth and in the human body, a shift is brought about in the consciousness-being of the individual practitioner, whereby a new pivot is established in the body, no longer prisoner of atavistic drives but responsive to a higher purpose. On that basis a truly new harmony establishes itself within the individual and his society. There is no longer a collapse of energies but rather a sort of mini-solar system manifests as a nuclear compound from where new influences emerge. Gradually these accumulate and extend and eventually draw into the orbit of the new System an increasingly wider sphere; until finally the entire planet becomes the home of this higher planetary society.

What evolves is therefore neither a new spirituality nor a new science or material ideology. It is something beyond all these known methods but that miraculously harmonises and integrates all the expressions of mind, life, and matter in a splendid act of synthesis. The truth of our world is a magnificent manifoldness, expressing an exquisite diversity. But-this multiple diversity is upheld and sustained by a power of integration and arises in a field of oneness, --just as our solar system is an expression of a superb manifold harmony within an integrating oneness.

This is an evolutionary process which respects the being as well as the becoming. Hence it does not seek to obliterate the cosmic harmony which is rooted in time and is the instrument for the Becoming. Rather, it evolves by the aid of those laws. Thus we can applaud Ilya Prigogine when he declares, 'I want to feel the evolution of things. I don't believe in transcending, but in being embedded in a reality that is temporal.' (OMNI, May, 1983.)

The critical crossroad we have reached is mirrored in the expansion of this very solar system to the observing eye of humankind. During the past several hundred years we have seen the System increase by three planets. While over this same period, pari passu with this expansion, the consciousness of the species and the condition of our civilisation have also undergone singular alterations. An acceleration in the evolution of consciousness never before witnessed has set in during this period, particularly heightened in our century. But what is required now, that 'choice of destiny', as Sri Aurobindo has called it, is a conscious collaboration with this process. Prior to this critical juncture the human being was carried along on the crests of the evolutionary wave in an unconscious fashion. But now, with the birth of a new consciousness and species, poised differently, centred on the higher axis of being, the possibility arises that we may collaborate consciously, guided by the harmonics of the very cosmos we inhabit and stand in awe of: an applied cosmology, not another speculative theory.

In the midst of the chaos we see about us a sublime cosmos emerges. Its life does not depend upon the old in the midst of which it stands. It emerges as the old crumbles, uncontaminated by the morose suggestions of purposelessness that vitiate the atmosphere of this dying world. It emerges because the conditions for it are determined by higher evolutionary laws, and is hence a thing inevitable in the history of our planet's time; even as the present mental being was an unavoidable and necessary circumstance, a step along the way but nothing more, and nobly played its role in the evolution of consciousness. The foundations of this new and higher species are solidly laid in the stratum that is indestructible. But not disengaged from material creation. Rather, these new foundations are rooted in matter and they form the basis for a new species and society.

Ms. Norelli-Bachelet lives in southern India, where she presides over the operations of the Aeon Centre of Cosmology. She has produced numerous published books and articles on the working of this new evolutionary force in the world.