The Gnostic Circle


"The Gnostic Circle is the most effective method for understanding the transformation of human
consciousness. It represents a vision of wholeness and has only one objective: it deals with the
soul or seed of the divine in each created thing and reveals the process by which that seed is
made to flower in its process of becoming."
Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
       
The Gnostic Circle

The Gnostic Circle

For each person there are two ways of being in the world, two existential situations critical to our perception of life and reality. The first and most common is an experience of the world from the historical perspective of linear time. The second, and more rare, is the direct perception of non-linear time or cosmic cycles. These modes of awareness represent two different worlds, one within the other. Non-linear or sacred time appears under the paradoxical aspect of whole time, an eternal present which is connected with man's deepest spiritual dimension. It is based upon a perception that time does not proceed endlessly in a straight line. Rather it is always and everywhere a closed curve, although from our ordinary perception, we do not see that it's movement is either curved or closed.

To move beyond the illusion of linearity and recover a realization of whole time one must undergo a process of yoga which illumines the cyclical nature of the life experience. This is most easily achieved through the application of a cosmological model which highlights certain essential relationships between man and the universe and which unveils a common center. In ancient times these cosmological models were based upon the known universe which was believed to consist of six planets and a central Sun. It was not until the 20th century, following the discovery of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, that the complete cosmological key could be revealed and man's integral transformation fully understood.

In ancient India, as in all other traditional societies, the unveiling of this axis or 'center' was achieved through a disciplined study of the archetypal language contained in the zodiacal hieroglyphs and a knowledge of the principles of the Cosmic order. Once these foundations are laid, one's lived experience becomes revelatory. The awareness gradually shifts from the ordinary linear perspective of past, present and future to an experience of time as a cyclical developmental process. As the individual lives and repeats these cycles of whole time, he becomes imprinted with their order and aligned with their harmonies. The axis of his being gradually shifts from the pivot of ego, to a higher perceptual center. For it is by observing the cycles of his own microcosmic process, that man comes to know the macrocosm and the principles of its evolution. In the Veda, this realization is known as SWAR or Truth-Consciousness, and grants the seeker a direct and unequivocal perception of Unity.

The Rig Veda, India's oldest and most sacred scripture, describes these cosmological secrets and the supremely enlightened state which results from an alignment with the Cosmic order. The Rishi declares:

These secret eternal worlds have been closed to us by our misperception of the movement of time. The months and the years, therefore have to be re-discovered and created in us by that same power. This, says the Rishi, is the mightiest work, the fairest achievement and it hinges on the conquest of time.

This was the essence of the Rig Vedic Yoga, lost for millennia until it was unveiled in the 1970's by Patrizia Noreill-Bachelet. From the principles of these ancient teachings, Ms. Norelli-Bachelet developed and articulated a new applied cosmology which she demonstrates in her book, "The Gnostic Circle, a synthesis in the harmonies of the cosmos". In this seminal text Ms. Norelli-Bachelet joins the measures of Time and Space in a functional synthesis and provides the means by which the individual may integrate the planetary harmonies with the harmonics of number and relate both to the passage of his own life.

As the reader will observe, Ms. Norell-Bachelet's cosmology deals with what, for centuries, has been divorced from traditional spirituality - the question of Time and Measure. And her work brings to completion the "supramental time vision" foreseen by Sri Aurobindo in his epic text, "The Synthesis of Yoga":

Used in conjunction with the practice of yoga, the Gnostic Circle reverses the long-standing perception of Time as the destroyer and presents mankind with an entirely new awareness of Time as the integrative mechanism by which a Divine purpose is expressed in the world, thus it contains the highest wisdom of our age.