The Yugas: The Great Time Cycles of the Universe

Time. What is it? This is such an odd question to ask, but to never inquire into the nature of time is even more strange. We are all subject to time and its process of birth, life, decay, and death. This linear process makes us believe that the nature of time is just linear and something we don't need to explore. But is it really linear, or is it something completely different and a lot greater than we have first considered? Time is something we never consider, just like fish don't consider the water in which they live. But in one of the longest-enduring cultures in the world, they didn't just consider time, but they also mapped its birth and relationship to the nature of consciousness itself. In this film, you will learn about one of the most unique perspectives of time known to humanity. Be prepared to have your worldview and perspective of time turned upside down. The ancient Eastern view of time is completely different to our modern view of time. A perfect example of this is the ancient Hindu time system known as the yugas. The word yuga in Sanskrit means age, cycle, or world era. The yugas are a complex world-age doctrine of four ages. The yugas map cycles of change within the universe and consciousness. The yugas build a solid framework for understanding how we experience time and eternity, and how both are related to one another, which is similar to the idea of samsara is nirvana and nirvana is samsara in Mahayana Buddhism. This way of thinking is completely different to the view of time and eternity held firm by Western religions and the Western general, which has become the accepted modern view of time. The Western view of time is linear, and this affects the Western view of eternity because the idea of an eternal heaven becomes something we have to wait for until after death. This Western view implies that eternity is bound to time. This is a ridiculous assumption considering eternity can only be ever-present in this very moment and can only be experienced when limiting thoughts and thinking have completely ceased. The Eastern view of eternity can be nowhere else but in this present moment, and a lot of their time systems and philosophies are based on this eternal now. As a result, the relationship between time and eternity is thought of very differently in the East, especially in the yuga system. Many Eastern traditions don't map time linearly, but instead they design systems to understand time's nonlinear qualities in relation to matter, mind, and spirit. In Hinduism, the nonlinearity of time is broken into cycles of time rather than a linear approach. These time cycles, known as the yugas, map the consciousness that drive the process of linear time that unfolds as human civilization. There are two yuga systems that are somewhat similar in terminology but a lot different in theory. There is the ancient long-count system and a more recent short-count system. Both systems are based on the concept of kalpa. Kalpa is a Sanskrit word that means aeon in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology. A kalpa equals 4.32 billion years. This massive period of time is not about lifetimes or an age, but rather the life of Earth. The concept of kalpa is described in the ancient texts of the Puranas, especially the Vishnu Purana and Bhagavata Purana. These texts are the original authority of the yugas and what the majority of Hindus follow. One kalpa of 4.32 billion years is regarded as a day of Brahma, the creator god, or creative principle that makes up a third of the Trimurti of gods alongside Vishnu, the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer. If you think 4.32 billion years is a long time, a maha kalpa consists of 100 years of which is a mind-boggling 311 trillion 40 billion years. In the long-count system, one kalpa is made up of 1000 maha yugas, or great yugas in English. The duration of a maha yuga is built on a system of four yugas. These four yugas are sacca yuga, treta yuga, dvapara yuga, and kali yuga. The first yuga is the sacca yuga, which is the ideal or truthful age spanning 1,728,000 years. The sacca yuga is often referred to as the golden age. In this age, humanity is governed by the gods, and it is believed that our connection to the ultimate reality of Brahman is not inhibited by our jiva, persona system. We are in perfect union with Brahman, and all of our actions and thinking are truly divine. Sacca yuga is an age of knowledge, wisdom, meditation, and love, where hatred does not exist. Humans in this age are erudite, honest, powerfully built, vigorous, virtuous, youthful, and long-lived. Actually, there is a belief that the average life expectancy in the sacca yuga is 4,000 years old. People in this age are also not divided by class, because the idea of separation is non-existent. As the Hindu epic the Mahabharata states, there were no poor and no rich. There was no need to labor, because all that men required was obtained by the power of will. The chief virtue was the abandonment of all worldly desires. The sacca yuga was without disease. There was no lessening with the years. There was no hatred or vanity or evil thought, no sorrow, no fear. All mankind could attain to supreme blessedness. After sacca yuga is the second yuga known as treta yuga, which is the age where virtue has declined by a quarter of sacca yuga. Treta yuga spans 1,296,000 years. Our consciousness in the treta yuga becomes a little more dualistic, which has greater implications through other yuga cycles. People in this age are slowly growing more materialistic and less inclined towards spirituality, though keep in mind this is a slow decline. Many social and planetary shifts happen within treta yuga. Emperors begin to rise and conquer the world. Wars begin to emerge and become part of our dualistic consciousness. The weather begins to change drastically, giving rise to the formation of oceans and deserts. Agriculture and mining come into existence, along with rules and regulations to keep society under control. Despite all of these seemingly negative effects caused by our slowly growing dualistic consciousness, treta yuga brought forth the knowledge of universal magnetism and allowed humans to understand the forces of nature and the nature of the universe from a dualistic perspective. Treta yuga is followed by dvapara yuga. Dvapara yuga is the age where virtue is reduced by half of what it was in the sacca yuga. According to the Bhagavata Purana, the dvapara yuga spans 864,000 years. Compassion and truthfulness are the two main pillars of spirituality in this age. Having only a spiritual faculty of compassion and truthfulness might be why the ancient hymns and oral tradition of the Vedas were compiled into four parts by the sagely author Vyasa during dvapara yuga, who is also believed to be the author of the epic Mahabharata and Puranas. The Vishnu Purana explains this compilation of four Vedas. In every third world age, dvapara, Vishnu, and the person of Vyasa, in order to promote the good of mankind, divides the Veda, which is properly but one, into many portions. Observing the limited perseverance, energy, and application of mortals, he makes the Veda fourfold to adapt it to their capacities, and the bodily form which he assumes, in order to affect that classification, is known by the name of Vedavyasa. Those four Vedas are Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharva Veda. Veda means knowledge, or more specifically, the knowledge of Brahman, the ultimate reality. They were an oral tradition that originated with the enlightened rishis, and this oral tradition was passed down through the generations. The Vedas historically are believed to not be works of the human mind, but rather the knowledge of Brahman realized through the intuitive perception of the rishis, giving the Vedas a divine origin. The Vedas that the rishis realized was the ordinary state of consciousness in the Satya Yuga. But this state of consciousness was lost throughout the ages due to our increasingly dualistic consciousness. The Vedas are compiled into four in dvapara yuga because people become tainted with even more dualistic qualities than in the Treta Yuga. People are discontent with life and more battles are waged on a grand scale. Kingdoms become solidified and out of touch with the general population. As a result, social class systems are created and have their own methods for attaining spiritual realization. A positive aspect of this age is people are believed to still possess characteristics of youth in old age and also the average lifespan is believed to be around a few centuries. But these positive aspects are paltry in comparison to the degradation of our mind in dvapara yuga. But thankfully, vyasa existed on the cusp of dvapara and the Kali Yuga, delivering to humanity a spiritual roadmap into the dark age. Without vyasa, spirituality as we know it today would have died a long time ago. At this transition of the yugas, the greatest of all battles during that period took place and our dualistic consciousness won the war over our non-dual nature, discarding the godly sage Krishna from the world. The last yuga, and we could definitely say the least, is Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga is where virtue is reduced to a quarter. Thankfully, in the greater scheme of things, Kali Yuga only spans the time of 432,000 years. From a human perspective that is an extremely long time, but from a universal perspective it's minuscule. According to the long-count system, what yuga are we in right now? You're probably assuming we are in the Satya Yuga, considering our short-sighted belief that we live in an evolved and enlightened world. According to the yugas, nothing could be further from the truth. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but according to the Hindu authority of the Puranas, we are only at the beginning of the Kali Yuga. Hindus believe the dark age of the Kali Yuga commenced with the death of Krishna, the godly sage and eighth avatar of Vishnu, after the famous battle in Kurukshetra explained in the Indian epic Mahabharata. Traditional Hindu authorities put this date at 3102 BCE, though many scholars dispute this date, suggesting a date of around 1500 BCE is more probable. Nevertheless, if we are to take the yuga world-age doctrine seriously, we are only at the beginning of the Kali Yuga. We've been on this long descent from the golden age of the Satya Yuga until now. This slow process spanning millions of years into the current Kali Yuga has stupefied our mind because that is part of the intrinsic characteristic of the dark age. What is the defining characteristic that shapes our consciousness in the Kali Yuga? The main characteristic is our mind's identification with the external world and a turning away from the inner world. This is where we focus on everything in the outside world and forget about the inner world. Our awareness is oriented toward the external world. What is of the highest value in the Kali Yuga is how we physically look, how we are perceived by others, our reliance on sensory needs, our dependency on relationships, our over-attachment to people and material possessions, and our focus on acquiring assets to promote our own ego. The defining characteristic of the Kali Yuga is basically the mind's entanglement with gross matter. Our mind is essentially entangled with the outside world. As a result, human civilization degenerates spiritually. People stop following dharma and lack virtue. Knowledge is lost and the ignorance of our true nature begins. The effects of this spiritual degradation are mindless hedonism, a breakdown of social structure, afflictions and maladies of the mind and body, unrestricted egotism, and greed and materialism. Essentially all of these problems are grounded in ignorance and are materially driven. Materialism, then, is the heart of the Kali Yuga because the mind's tendency in this age is geared towards consumerist thinking. Consumerism becomes the accepted way of life in the Kali Yuga. Ask yourself, does this behavior sound familiar? It's hard to argue that we're not in the Kali Yuga when we see what mainly drives people's actions and motivations. According to the Yugas, then, we are at one of our lowest points of evolution due to our We are a hostage to our own self-image. This devolution into matter in the Kali Yuga might be what is fueling our attraction to digital technology and the eventual development of AI and transhumanism. The lowest point of the Kali Yuga might be transhumanism because some people would rather be robots and live forever than be a natural human and experience death. The integration of mind into technology will likely be the lowest point of the Kali Yuga, if it happens. Such technological motivations reflect the Kali Yuga's defining characteristic that the material universe is everything and the inner world of consciousness is nothing without the material world. This type of thinking is one of the greatest threats to the survival of the human race. So before you play unconsciously with your phone, ask yourself, what is this habit doing to me and how is it training my mind to be? Actually, our addiction to our phone and the digital world trains us to feel as though they are both a part of us. This state of confusion aligns with the materialist nature of the Kali Yuga. Evidence of this identification with digital devices and the digital world is showcased when someone criticizes social media or digital technology and other people jump to their defense, which is just plain odd when you think about it. They are not living things that we have an intrinsic emotional connection to. They are just objects and an artificial world that could be taken away any moment if the internet disappeared. Could you imagine how stupid I would look if I defended a toaster like it was my friend? I'd look like an idiot. Many people unconsciously defend social media and digital technology because they want to justify their unconscious habits. Just ask yourself, how many times do you unconsciously reach for your phone in a day? Though this may seem insignificant, it's all leading to a movement away from raw nature and our intrinsic naturalness and connection with the universe. As a result, the transhumanist agenda is hell-bent on avoiding something as natural as death through the integration of mind into technology. The transhumanists hold immortality on a pedestal and fear death. Our fear of death is intensified in the Kali Yuga because of the belief that matter is everything. Death is an important part of life that we tend to demonize because we don't know enough about the experience. But from a naturalistic view of life and death, the integration of mind into technology will be a permanent hell we cannot escape. As we began to move into the Kali Yuga after Krishna left the earth and returned to the heavenly abode of Vaikuntha, some enlightened sages, including Vyasa, could foresee our future and they wrote the Puranas, Tantras, and other scriptures to serve our spiritual needs in this dark age. These were specifically designed for a spiritual seeker's inherent difficulties in the Kali Yuga. In the Kali Yuga we lack the moral fiber and mental concentration necessary to pursue the path of liberation. But fortunately we have access to the divine knowledge in these ancient texts, which can bring our awareness back to our true nature within, allowing us to pursue the path of liberation. The hope is that there are enough people in the world who wake up to their divinity. This will be revealed when we cease the mind's gravitational pull towards the external world. Only then can the human race survive the Kali Yuga and progress into the golden age of Satyuga. In various Puranas they speak of the tenth avatar of Vishnu named Kalki, who is foretold to come into this world near the end of the Kali Yuga. Kalki is thought of as riding a white horse brandishing a blazing sword. His task is to destroy the present age, to give birth to the Age of Truth with a capital T, Satya Yuga. The truth is, the seed of Kalki is within all of us who realize the true self, the Atman, the undifferentiated consciousness within all, because our true nature is that of Brahman, and we can only experience that when we abide as That. Though the idea of Kali Yuga may seem grim and depressing, a short-count system of the yugas was designed. The short-count system is more of an optimistic view of where human civilization is currently heading. The short-count yugas was introduced by the Indian mystic Sri Yukteswar and is promoted by the modern-day mystic Sadguru. Sri Yukteswar explains the short-count system in twelve brief pages in his classical book, The Holy Science. Sri Yukteswar doesn't base his theory of the yugas on the older long-count tradition, but he does use the same terminology and similar characteristics for each yuga. His system of the yugas was born from his own self-realization. The short-count system of the yugas focuses on the correlation of inner consciousness and outward behavior. Sri Yukteswar explained that as human consciousness changes, so does civilization and human development. With this short-count model, we can begin to perceive a discernible pattern in our seemingly chaotic history. In David Steinmetz and Joseph Selby's book, The Yugas, they trace our known history in a way that supports the claims of the short-count yuga system. They show a recognizable cycle of human civilization that descended to a certain point of time and evidence of an ascension. To understand this, I need to explain how the short-count yugas are different to the long-count system. Sri Yukteswar's theory is based on the radical idea that our own sun revolves around a dual star in a cycle of 24,000 years. It's a binary star system. Sri Yukteswar explains that this is a celestial phenomenon caused by the backward movement of the equinoctial points around the zodiac. The common explanation for this is precession, meaning the wobbling, rotating movement of the earth's axis. Sri Yukteswar explains this in The Holy Science. He states, The sun also has another motion by which it revolves around a grand center called Vishnunapi, which is the seat of the creative power, Brahma, the universal magnetism. Brahma regulates dharma, the mental virtue of the internal world. When the sun and its revolution around its jewel come to the place nearest to this grand center, the seat of Brahma, an event which takes place when the autumnal equinox comes to the first point of Aries, dharma, the mental virtue, becomes so much developed that man can easily comprehend all, even the mysteries of spirit. Each age has its own dharma. Dharma here means virtue. Our dharma is at the pinnacle of virtue when our sun and its jewel are closest to the grand center of the universe, the creative power of Brahma. To map where we currently are in the short-count system, we need to understand how the complete cycle of 24,000 years is mapped. As with the long-count system, the short-count system is made up of four yugas using the same terminology as the original system. But the difference is the short-count system splits the yugas in two, resulting in eight ages that mirror each other. So one full cycle of 24,000 years goes through 12,000 years of descent and then 12,000 years of ascent. In the short-count yugas, the golden age of Satya Yuga is a duration of 9,600 years, split into 4,800 years of ascent and descent. Satya Yuga is considered the spiritual age and has the same defining characteristics of the original system. As a result, it is in the Satya Yuga where our dharma is so virtuous that we can understand what Brahman, the ultimate reality, is intellectually. There is no separation between an individual and Brahman. The next yuga in the short-count system is Treta Yuga. It has a duration of 7,200 years, split into 3,600 years of ascent and descent. It is the mental age where we can use our mind to influence matter and other things. Some scholars who support this short-count system suggest this was how we might have erected megalithic structures, like the pyramids in Egypt. Another aspect of the Treta Yuga is telepathy. The notion that we could influence other minds shouldn't come as a shock considering the belief that we can erect megalithic structures with our mind. So telepathic abilities are considered the norm in this age. The next age is Dvapara Yuga. It has a duration of 4,800 years, split into 2,400 years of ascent and descent. Dvapara Yuga is the age of energy, the age where we begin to understand that everything is energy and so we begin to use energy to our advantage. This includes the discovery of electricity and advances in science and technology. The last yuga is the Kali Yuga. It has a duration of 2,400 years, split into 1,200 years of ascent and descent. As with the long-count system, the Kali Yuga in the short-count system is the material age, where our minds are turned outward and are essentially entangled with the material world. The common illusory belief in this age is that matter is all that exists. There is no deep awareness of energy, mind, or spirit. At the beginning and end of each yuga is a transitional period known in Sanskrit as samdhis. This transitional period is the time when the state of mind is influenced by the energy of the next yuga, in the current yuga, and likewise the state of mind from the previous yuga still lingers until we move into the new yuga completely at the end of the transitional period. If we follow the cycle of the short-count yuga system, the pinnacle of the spiritual age was not too distant in the past. The height of the Satya Yuga, according to Sri Yukteswar's theory, was specifically at 11,501 BCE, or 11,500 BCE to simplify. The life in this spiritual age is thought to be much simpler than our modern complex world. Scholars suggest that some of the evidence for the Satya Yuga in this time period is discovered by examining the state of mind behind certain archaeological sites such as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. The reason Göbekli Tepe is significant is because it is some sort of spiritual complex or place of worship rather than residential, and its oldest structures have been dated to around 9,000 BCE, placing it near the pinnacle of the short-count Satya Yuga in the descending cycle. The evidence for Satya Yuga is also supported by Graham Hancock's Lost Civilization theory. Hancock postulates that an advanced civilization lived 12,000 years ago and they were wiped out due to some sort of cataclysm, likely a comet strike. Satya Yuga also gives some credence to the idea of Atlantis, which may correspond to Hancock's Lost Civilization theory. But the Lost Civilization theory and Atlantis are not accepted by the scientific community at large because of the belief that Plato invented Atlantis to teach philosophy, making the island either fictional or metaphorical myth rather than real. Nevertheless, Atlantis and the idea of a lost chapter of human civilization have been part of our intuitions about the evolution of our species for a long time. I don't want to persuade you one way or the other, but what I want you to consider is how both theories might correspond to the narrative of the short-count Yuga system. Since the age of the Satya Yuga, we descended through the Yugas. The lowest point of the current short-count Yuga cycle according to Sri Yukteswar was 499 CE. We could say roughly 500 CE. The time of 500 CE was when the vernal equinox was at zero degrees Aries. Sri Yukteswar placed the beginning of the Golden Age at the opposite pole of the Zodiac when the vernal equinox was at zero degrees Libra. If the lowest point of the short-count Kali Yuga was 500 CE, this means the end of the Kali Yuga was the year 1700 CE, specifically 1699 CE. This places us today in the ascending cycle of Dvapara Yuga, and this is why Sri Yukteswar's model of the Yugas can be viewed as being more optimistic than the original system of which places us at the beginning of a tumultuous 432,000-year cycle of the Kali Yuga. We moved into Dvapara Yuga proper in 1900 CE, after passing through the transitional period, Sandhis. Amazingly, Sri Yukteswar predicted several developments that eventually happened in Dvapara Yuga. Keep in mind, he wrote the holy science in 1894. He predicted the rapid development of knowledge in the 20th century and also the discovery that energy underlies all matter. Basically, he championed the idea that everything is energy. His insights predate Einstein's E equals mc squared by over ten years. Though it should be noted, the idea of everything is energy has been a hallmark of Eastern thought for as long as anyone can remember. Einstein's theory, on the other hand, came five years into Dvapara Yuga proper, and this changed our worldview. Sri Yukteswar predicted that it was inevitable for this knowledge to surface into popular consciousness because energy is the characteristic of Dvapara Yuga. From Sri Yukteswar's perspective, the relationship between energy and matter would have been brought to light by someone else if Einstein didn't reveal it because energy is the defining characteristic of the short-count Dvapara Yuga. We know today, over 100 years removed from the revelations of Sri Yukteswar, that energy is a primary focus in the world, and this is increasing with the evolution of technology and clean energy, which ultimately benefits the world. This also relates to the growing interest in Eastern spiritual practices that focus on how we use our subtle energies. Both systems are intriguing and have their own differing reasons why we should believe them. We can see the validity of the ancient long-count system because of the materialistic world around us and the spiritual degradation of humanity. We can also see the validity of the short-count system because of our modern focus on energy and how intelligent use of technology can help humanity and also how an intelligent understanding of spiritual practices can help the individual understand oneself on the path to spiritual liberation. But in the end, it's really up to how you feel. It's a matter of whether you trust the deep intuitions of Sri Yukteswar or prefer to trust an ancient tradition going back thousands of years. The Puranas are the traditional authority, and that needs to be respected if we are to take the Yuga seriously. But it doesn't mean we discount the intuitions of Sri Yukteswar. We can frame the world through both systems, and that really depends on your own perception of the world. What is imperative to understand and intrinsic to both systems is that deep down our nature is pure, and once upon a time we lived completely from that pure essence of the universe. But it has slowly become eclipsed by the orientation of our mind toward the external world through the cycles of time, disconnecting us from everything else. Despite the defining characteristic of any Yuga, there are those of us who embody the consciousness of the Satya Yuga by dedicating one's life to the path of liberation, and their enlightenment leads others out of the darkness and into the light, completing our journey from the ignorance of our own divinity to the knowledge of Brahman within all of