Connecting the Dots

As a child I was a big fan of the game Connect the Dots. I enjoyed drawing and seeing the underlying picture that the designer had ‘hidden’ in a seemingly random display of dots. If the dots were not numbered, if there were not a proper sequence to be followed, then the design would not become apparent, or else it would be vague or distorted. In modern language, the name of this game has become a common metaphor for connecting and following elements of a story or a problem in the right order or sequence in a way that reveals the greater picture or solution. Hence ‘connect the dots’ is somewhat synonymous with solving a puzzle or mystery. If one does not ‘connect the dots’, the design or the truth at hand remains a mystery.

In ‘Piscean Hangover or Aquarian Age Appropriate’ I wrote a bit about the ‘process of measuring’ and ‘learning to appreciate relationships between parts of any whole.’ The goal of this process and this learning is akin to the game ‘Connect the Dots’. Victory is a revelation – a vision of the whole and knowledge of how the parts contribute to the whole. With the right keys of measure, the seemingly random dots (i.e. the forms and events in our field of time and space), begin to reveal a morphing and evolving sacred temple – a living sacred design (a living sacred geometry) with a central axis and central ‘flame’. One becomes aware of the hidden design. Past and present forms and events take their proper place in the design – in the living sacred temple. All forms and events are seen in orderly relation to the same central flame or axis. All forms and events are seen to be children of or expressions of the same central flame or axis.

Of course winning this unifying revelation/consciousness (in whatever progressive stages or levels) is not a child’s game played out on a piece of paper; it is a hero’s journey and an epic evolutionary task played out across the body of the Earth, the solar system and cosmos, throughout years and aeons. If in past civilizations, this journey and its divine nectar (soma) or revelation has been reserved for select individuals, heroes or sages; in our Aquarian Age consciousness of the hidden design and the hidden one or unknown architect of the design is to be a world-wide awakening, a new collective consciousness … a collective upgrade or new operating system.

I imagine that some, if not many readers can understand the need to ‘connect the dots’ of our seemingly random and disconnected lives towards developing a fuller and more integral consciousness of the hidden design by which the One is expressed in the Many. And many will have no problem with the idea that the journey towards this consciousness is played out across the body of the Earth, solar system and cosmos throughout years and aeons. However, when it comes to fathoming exactly how that play is contained and how it comes into view, this is where most of us go blank, become impenetrable to new information or scatter off in tangents and discord. The Vedic Sage Dirghatama addressed both the solution and the problem very concisely:

Twelve spokes, one wheel, navels three.
Who can comprehend this?
On it are placed together
three hundred and sixty like pegs.
They shake not in the least.
(Dirghatama, Rig Veda 1.164.48)

As it sits alone, this verse is a conundrum to the mind … a random dot of information. Its relation to the task of winning an integral vision and consciousness of the whole is not clear, it occurs as just another piece of the world puzzle. It is simple enough to see that this Vedic Rishi was describing one 360 degree wheel, divided into (or by) 12 ‘spokes’. The three navels paint the picture of one wheel consisting of three concentric circles. The three navels of the three concentric circles are one. A version of this ancient description is found in the Mother's Symbol as seen on the cover of her 'Agenda' (missing the central point or navel). But how is this significant? What is to be comprehended?

The mystery begins to unravel when one realizes that the Rishi was describing the field which contains the divine evolutionary play and is the backdrop or framework by which the revelation of the integral whole comes into view. If in the child’s game of Connect the Dots the field of the revelation is a two-dimensional piece of paper, in the game attaining a higher vision or consciousness of the divine Self and a unified creation, the field of the revelation is the 360 degree circle or sphere. Our civilization has inherited this measurement, the division by 12 and further divisions of the circle from our Vedic ancestors. In fact we have inherited our 9 number system with its zero and therefore the structure of our mathematics from them as well. Who they inherited these systems of measurement from is not known.

What is known is that with the 360 degree circle and its 12 ‘spokes’, the Vedic Rishi described a journey in time and space that is shared by all Earthlings – the Year. In Secrets of the Veda, Sri Aurobindo recognized that the Vedic conception and experience of the 12 month year not only far exceeded our modern sense of the purpose of time and the calendar, but also in many ways far exceed our current level of consciousness.

‘The secret eternal worlds have been closed to us, says the Rishi, by the movement of Time, by the months and years; therefore naturally they have to be discovered, revealed, conquered, created in us by the movement of Time …’

‘… 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, rtenabhindan parivatsare valam, “by the truth, in the revolution of the year, they broke Vala,” or, as Sayana interprets it, “by sacrifice lasting for a year.”’

To the Rishi, the Vedic Year was a living symbol, a living framework of the hero’s journey, a microcosm of the evolutionary journey in which the lost or hidden Truth-Consciousness or lost Sun/Soul is to be found and the spell of self and world ignorance (Vala) broken. The Year and other 360 degree cycles of time such as the day and the precession of the equinoxes (the Great Year), were known to be a living geometry, a sacred multi-dimensional temple or field of time-space. The hidden consciousness that expressed itself in these circles of time, in the structure of time, was known to be one and the same as the hidden consciousness that expressed itself in the dimensions, structure and movements of planetary and solar bodies, and in the geometry, structure and movements of nature, and in the life cycles and structure of human beings. Evidence of this ancient integral knowing or gnosis is introduced in Secrets of the Veda, especially in Sri Aurobindo’s acknowledgement that in the Indian Puranas ‘it is stated that the body of man is the year.’

There is of course much more to write on this topic of ‘Connecting the Dots’ in a way that reveals and celebrates the eternal sacred design and its eternal ‘alter’, sun or soul that unites and harmonizes the whole. A ‘Part II’ is likely. For now, I will end this post with a quote from Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet who goes far beyond Sri Aurobindo’s powerful introduction of the Vedic conception of the 360 degree year, into the details of exactly how consciousness is expanded via proper knowledge and orientation within the Year, and other 360 degree cycles of time.

‘… in order to grasp the unity underlying the magnificent order of the universe the capacity must be cultivated to view man, the solar system, the galaxy, and finally the whole of the universe as one being. He must come to see that in the rhythms of Earth and those of its inhabitants the very same movements and the same order and goal are seen as in the entire body of the manifest Divine. He must realise, and in no abstract way, that within him is a universe like unto the heavenly harmony that moves above him and around him and his planet.’– The Gnostic Circle

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