The Yugas

Today I want to start a reflection on the ages of the world. There have been many models of such ages, including the aforementioned psychohistory model, but one that I find to be of particular interest is the traditional Indian understanding of cyclical yugas. In my studies I have not come across any source on this which I trust more than the Aghora trilogy by Robert Svoboda. Skeptics may decry this but in the field of spiritual knowledge it would be absurd to put oneself solely in the hands of modern academia.

I begin by quoting two sections from the second book of the trilogy. For those unfamiliar with the books, they are in the form of discussions between the author, Robert Svoboda, and his mentor, the tantric master Vimalananda, during the 1970's and 80's. (In fact, the first book in the trilogy is all monologues by Vimalananda, the second book changes the format to dialogue.)

The first section discusses the four yugas. The second section discusses the ten avataras in relation to Kali Yuga. In both sections, I use bold type for key paragraphs. 

"Each period of creation, or 'day' in the lifetime of the Creator, is called a kalpa. [...] Each kalpa lasts for billions of years, and is divided up into fourteen periods called manvantaras [...] Each manvantara is made up of about seventy cycles of the Four Yugas. The Four Ages are Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and our era, Kali Yuga. We are now living in the twenty-eighth Kali Yuga since the beginning of the current manvantara."

"At the end of Kali Yuga there is a pralaya, a period when all societies and communities are destroyed, usually bu natural calamities. Then there is a period of rest, and Satya Yuga begins again. At the end of each manvantara there is a more extensive destruction, and at the end of the kalpa the entire cosmos is temporarily resolved into its elements while the Creator 'sleeps'. When He wakes, the cosmos is again recreated by His thought. We are all actors in the Creator's dream" 

[...]

"Now, in Kali Yuga, only one-fourth of the normal amount of righteousness remains. [...] Everything is in flux and always changing, and you are likely to get contrary effects from any religious rituals you perform. But, the texts say that Kali Yuga is the best of all ages because it is the age in which everyone, regardless of caste or karma, can realize God. The problem is, most people are so overcome by Maya that they have no desire to know God."

"Kali Yuga eventually develops into the Ghora ('terrible') Kali Yuga, when things get really bad in the world, at which point the gutters are overflowing with filth. Nature then cleans out the gutters, by whatever means She sees fit to use, and Satya Yuga begins again."

Aghora II: Kundalini, p. 100, p. 101.

"After Krishna leaves the Earth Kali Yuga begins. Then comes Buddha. Buddhi means discrimination, and Lord Buddha represents the perfection of discrimination, though He is devoid of aesthetic experience. He is a man whose logical faculties are fully developed, but Who is trying to do without Maya altogether because of the many temptations of Maya, which increase in strength as Kali Yuga develops. He is not willing to live in the world and enjoy it; He wants out of the world. Lord Buddha is called the Compassionate One because even though He is no longer in the world He longs to to help others who are trapped in the cycle of birth and death to escape also.

The last Avatara is Kalki, who is yet to come. [...] When Kali Yuga is at its worst He will appear and will destroy all but a handful of people. Then He will change the consciousnesses of those whom He allows to live so that they will remember something of their true selves, and Satya Yuga will begin again." 

"So this whole business of yugas and avataras is basically one long loop of evolution from the extreme of intuitive consciousness to the extreme of intellectual consciousness, and then back again?"

"More or less."

"And it just keeps going on, over and over?"

"Yes, it does, but it is more like a spiral than a circle, since the events of one cycle act as a foundation for the events of the next. There is a continuous progression. Now, this idea of the Ten Avataras as reflections of the evolution of human consciousness is just the beginning; every concept should have many layers of meaning. Then Ten Avataras also reflect individual spiritual evolution."

- Aghora II: Kundalini, p. 228.

We will not here focus very much on the question of avataras, but on yugas. And we note that the movement of the yugas can be summarized as "one long loop of evolution from the extreme of intuitive consciousness to the extreme of intellectual consciousness, and then back again". This is a key explanation. From the sea of undifferentiated consciousness, we have moved to the dominion of razor-sharp intellect. Many people should be able to accept this perspective, whether they are religious creationists or darwinian atheists. (As for those who deny the reality of consciousness altogether, they are lost.) There should be no dispute then, if the model of the yugas is valid, that we are now in the last of the four yugas.

Now, we may question the model above with its explicit assumption that after the end of Kali Yuga, Satya Yuga will begin again. We could envision at least two other possible outcomes:

1) Kali Yuga never ends: Once Man has achieved his current level of extreme intellectual consciousness, he never returns to the undivided consciousness again. Rather, he keeps moving towards ever-sharpening forms of intellectualism and materialism. That would be in harmony with a standard account the development of the modern world: After Man has seen the light of Reason, why would he ever again start going "backwards"?

2) Kali Yuga does end, but it is not replaced by Satya Yuga, for how could Man suddenly go from extremely intellectual to extremely intuitive? Rather, Kali Yuga is followed by Dvapara Yuga (the third age), which is followed by Treta Yuga (the second age), finally followed by Satya Yuga. 

We believe that option 1) is unrealistic, if only because it is now very difficult to believe that Man will continue on his present course for many more hundreds of years, let alone thousands or millions of years. The break with the natural order has come so swiftly and had such disastrous consequences for the balance of nature that something now has to give. A defender of 1) may suggest that even if the state of the world is rapidly worsening and "the gutters are overflowing with filth", many humans will survive the coming centuries and go on live better than ever, with genetic upgrades and computer implants of various kinds. But even for such a hold-out of hypermodern posthuman civilization, it is unclear how long it could survive. Most likely it would continue to pollute its surroundings without any kind of faith in God or Nature, and with bigger toys come greater risks. Thus, in the long run - half a millenium or so - we question whether 1) is realistic. However, if such survival were coupled with true human enlightenment, the way many New Agers imagine, then perhaps such dangers could be averted, but then it would still not be Kali Yuga any longer, thus 1) would still be false.

Such a scenario - a hypermodern civilization joined together with some kind of collective spiritual awakening - seems more akin to option 2) above, and also more in tune with the psychohistory model. I believe this is more realistic, seeing as we have already left behind some of the darkest expressions of materialism (compulsory atheism in some countries) and now, possibly, we are heading towards the light. The defender of 2) still has to show how spiritual enlightenment can ever occur on a collective level, excepting new spiritual movements which quickly tend to become debased anyway. 

If both 1) and 2) are false, then the scenario described in Aghora II: Kundalini begins to seem more feasible, though it makes limited sense to the rational mind. Perhaps the only way a modern scientist could accept it is if we were to interpret it in the following way: modern, rational, intellectual Man will live until he has destroyed his world utterly and completely, at which point lower life-forms will take over the world again, and the planet will slowly heal. After many millions of years, more complex life-forms will again emerge, and finally something akin to humans. These "new humans" will go on to become more and more intellectual until they develop all the necessary technology to destroy the world once more, after which they too go extinct, and so on. 

This goes against the accounts given by Vimalananda in Aghora II: Kundalini in at least two ways:

1. Vimalananda speaks only of human evolution; there are humans in Satya Yuga also.

2. Vimalananda speaks of a progression of ages, where the events of one cycle of yugas builds on the events of a previous cycle. Though it is a somewhat obscure statement, in all likelihood this refers to something more than just the material artifacts left behind from the last cycle of yugas - something spiritual. 

Furthermore, the theory of avataras could of course never be accepted by the rationalist mind. In Vimalananda's account, the last avatar commonly known as Kalki is necessary for the transition from Kali Yuga to Satya Yuga.

More on the avataras in a future post.