The Relative, the Absolute, the One

'What are the difficulties I face? I have to bring the Absolute Truth into a world of relativism, into a civilisation of relativity perception. That is, I have to unveil the Being in the Becoming.'
- Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (1989)

'The Relative, the Absolute, the One' as reproduced below is one of many 'Letters from Skambha' written by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea) to various students of her work and chronicled in The Vishaal Newsletter. This letter was published with several others in TVN in June of 1989. [see Related Posts]. These letters continue to expose the error of spiritual pursuits that emphasize the static Being over the spacial and temporal Becoming. [see Being and Becoming]



‘The Relative, the Absolute, the One’

…In your letter you had asked about ‘truth’, perhaps it can be given only in ‘drops’. Well, this is true in a way. But the fact is I have given out the full thing, yet even when people read they themselves only select ‘drops’, or what they can understand at any given moment. So, now I have come to the point, just very recently, of taking a different attitude. I am not going to bother with people who have doubts and who cling to them, because they refuse to let go of their doubts since it would mean a commitment and a progress. They would have to CHANGE, quite simply. It is easier to keep doubting. The doubt helps one to remain the same, stuck in the same mire and never going anywhere. Or else they cling to falsehood, out and out. So, I shall not bother any more.
I will put the truth to you, plain and simple. But I cannot promise that its simplicity will be of any help to you. However, let me try. It concerns your question about the Ananda Power… Yes, this Power corresponds to the Third… But I find these titles just too limiting. They are, for me, the old formulation which arose out of an incomplete knowledge. At the time Sri Aurobindo formulated his work in this way he was describing a manifestation based on TWO POWERS. This created a certain limitation. But he had no choice. That was all time had evolved and ‘permitted’. More ‘time’ was needed to be able to express the true new way.
What this meant was a shift from two to three. That is, it revolved around the triune Godhead. This is another question you ask regarding September Letters. The Triune Godhead is this: Transcendent, Cosmic, Individual. It is as simple as that. But there is so much in this little triadic formula. Because, you see, these Powers have never INCARNATED together, in an unbroken line, before. And it is only when this shift takes place, from two to three, that we move out of LINEAR perception and into the spherical consciousness of Unity. This sounds simple enough. However, it is pregnant with a revolutionising content. Let me go further.
In terms of Numbers the above makes all the difference in the world. You see, from very ancient times sages had perceived that Number held the key to almost everything. The Greeks themselves had perceived this, to the point where Plato, I believe, claimed that God only geometrises, that Number was the essence of creation and that through Number we could come to know God.
But what was the block in their perception? It was the failure to understand or to ‘sees’ the Zero. And why had they failed to ‘see’ the Zero? Because this triune manifestation had not occurred yet. And why? Simply because ‘the time had not yet come’.
Now, remember the words the Mother heard at the time of the Supramental Manifestation on 29 February 1956? They were, ‘The time has come.’ This sounds plain enough and easy enough to explain. Yes, the time has now come. But again there is much more to this simple message. TIME HAD COME. The ability via the channels of Time to give form to that highest Truth. This could only be done with Time as an ally, and on the basis of a complete shift regarding the seeing of Number and its relation to the Creative Power and its subsequent formulation. That shift concerned the question of Unity: unity could no longer be expressed as ‘the One’. It was the Zero.
Here I am not giving you ‘drops’ but the whole truth. Yet you could never appreciate what this means, therefore it must be, for you, just drops. But when I write ‘you’ I mean everyone on this planet today. That may sound like an exaggeration, but, believe me, I have very sound reasons to be able to make this apparently outlandish statement. The reason is that this simple ‘shift’ marks the threshold between the old and the new consciousness, between the overmind and the Supermind, between the old way and the new way, between a world of relativism and a perception of absolutism.
The latter brings us to an important point. What I have written, equipped with this formula, in The New Way and in all my other books concerns absolute truth. Therefore it has this quality of definiteness and unquestionable precision, accuracy, fact. And this is what disturbs many people who read my books, especially The New Way. No one feels comfortable with Absolutes. Our civilisation is constructed around a ‘relative centre’. This is the Nothingness that is supposed to hold it together. This is where science has carried us: relativity, quantum ‘unpredictable’ physics, and all the rest. We are comfortable with that because it allows us to continue as we are. If everything is relative, anything can be true. But when you pick up a work like The New Way, how do you accommodate this poise? I mean, how can you be comfortable with all those unbelievable facts of events having already taken place in Time, in this exquisite pattern, and still hold on to the Doubt, which is the child of relativism? It is impossible. Either you agree to make this shift, or else you put the book (and all my work) aside and you simply admit that it is not for you…. There are other, more wicked ways of dealing with this problem. You can destroy that Truth that makes you feel so uncomfortable. Such is the nature of fear…

Back to the Zero. From ancient times sages had seen unity as One. Isn’t it beautiful: the One is a LINEAR figure. The Zero is circular. Again, ‘the symbol is the thing symbolised’, this time regarding number symbols, or figures. This fact, that unity was equated with the One, may seem irrelevant or of little importance; but it describes the collapse of our civilisation; while the shift to the perception of unity as the Zero describes the new creation and its spherically perceiving consciousness.
Put another way, what this means is that we have torn a veil. We have pushed perception back, beyond the manifest One. You see, the One is the Fourth not the first – if you understand what I mean. Before that Fourth, who is the One, or the point in space, there are the three powers of the Zero, 9, 6, and 3. Never before had this been perceived, because these Powers had not incarnated in a connected Line. This is what is so special about the 9th Manifestation. Can we have any greater Grace than to be born now, when this is taking place? But those who would freeze Sri Aurobindo’s work at the manifestation of just the first two Powers, would wish to impede us from enjoying and living this fullest truth of the Age. Z had asked about Tao and its relation to my work. Yes, I answered, there is a relation. But, you see, in Tao also there is a truth that was incomplete. They saw the world built on two principles, Yin and Yang. And there was a twist in that perception precisely because it was incomplete. Yang is, for the Taoist, the creative power; but it is masculine. Whereas in India you have ‘everything in its place’: the Shakti is that Creative Power – the feminine kinetic principle, the formative Power of the Supreme. Why have they seen THAT? Because, remember, they also ‘saw’ the Zero. India gave the Zero to the world. She could only do so if she had seen its truth. When you are dealing with Numbers you are dealing with truths of perception, with expanses of consciousness, with seeings of absoluteness.
What are the difficulties I face? I have to bring the Absolute Truth into a world of relativism, into a civilisation of relativity perception. That is, I have to unveil the Being in the Becoming. To do this I have had to change the direction of the perception: into the Core where the seat of Absolute Truth is lodged, in the individual and in creation. This is why I place so much emphasis on the direction of the quest. It may seem irrelevant in a world that believes ‘all paths lead to God’. There is no path today except this one that leads to the Core. To describe the Third properly one must refer to the Core. It is true that Ananda is its quality – but there is so much more to say… If you read Chapter 10 of The Magical Carousel (and the Commentaries), you will understand the relation between the Core and Absolutism better.

…Yes, a number of Yogis in India perceive that ‘something’ is happening in India and in the world. But my experience has been that most are still bogged down in the mire of the Kali Yuga perception: we are in the Kali Yuga and everything is dismal and dark. And that is it. They do not go beyond that. They know that Kalki must come to redeem the situation, but they are bogged down there too because they have misseen and put the Buddha at the 9th place in the line of Ten Avatars, so this has thrown them off. What is amusing is that the old seers claimed that the Buddha, even though he was the 9th Avatar, was a ‘ruse of the Supreme’ to ‘mislead seekers’. For reasons best known to them! Indeed, this misplacement has been misleading seekers for 2000 years! I am trying to ‘put order’ into this chaos, and to ‘put each thing in its place’. But is there any real interest? They are now embarking upon a major work, an encyclopaedia of Hinduism. I’ll bet you that even in this colossal, comprehensive work they will request some scholarly sage to write about the Ten Avatars and he will produce an article for this encyclopaedia that will continue to put the Buddha at the 9th position! And so, the falsehood gets repeated and the seekers keep getting led astray by that rascal of Buddha! It is comical.
Enough of ‘absolute truth’ … (14.4.1989) [all images added]
© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, 1989
Other Letters from Skambha by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet:
* 'Fission and Fusion: Symbols of the Old World and the New'
* 'Feminism's Conundrum'
* The Infinite and the Detail
* 'The Void Where Thought Was Born'
* 'One Must Go Deeper' [to the STABLE, PERMANENT, IMMOBILE core of Being]
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Blogger/Author LORI TOMPKINS grew up in Virginia and received her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia in 1991 and an MA in Education at the University of Colorado in 1994. Lori has been a student of Integral and Supramental Yoga since 1993, and she currently lives and teaches Hatha Yoga in California.

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