At some point in your life you must've seen the pictures of the ancient pyramids in Egypt and wondered how the heck did the people in the primitive ages even construct such a huge structure without any machinery?
To think of building such a structure even with the help of modern machinery seems like a difficult task! Every rock weighs in around 2.5 tonnes and lifting them to such a height and placing them correctly... it sure seems like there has been a divine intervention, right?
What if there actually was?
Or maybe
What if the people who built them came from a more advanced civilization than us?
That's where the Cycle of Yugas come in to put things in place.
The ancient Sanskrit teachings understood that civilizations go through cycles of creation and destruction. Time was understood to be circle and not linear as we know it today.
The term "Yuga" refers to a specific division of time in the ongoing flow of cosmic history. ~ newworldencyclopedia.org
I've been reading a lot of books during lockdown and an interesting book made into my Audible collection. It was "The Yugas - Keys to understanding our hidden past, emerging energy age, and enlightened future" by Joseph Selbie and David Steinmetz that inspired me to write this article.
Some of the knowledge in this book has been borrowed from an ancient Indian monk Shri Yukteshwar Giri's book "The Holy Science".
Shri Yukteshwar Giri is the Guru of the famous Paramahansa Yogananda, the author of the bestselling book "Autobiography Of A Yogi" and a monk himself.
I would definitely recommend you give these three books a read!
The circle in above two pictures represent a Mahayuga (Great Age). The Mahayuga is divided into 4 Yugas:
- Satya Yuga (Golden Age)
- Treta Yuga (Silver Age)
- Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age)
- Kali Yuga (Iron Age/Dark Age)
The above 4 Yugas have been mentioned in the order of best to worst, where Satya Yuga happens to be the best age in humanity and Kali Yuga to be the worst.
Most believe we are currently in Kali Yuga but Shri Yukteshwar Giri has mentioned in his book that we have transitioned into Dwapara Yuga and are currenly ascending the cycle (in this direction: Kaliyuga->Dwapara Yuga->Treta Yuga->Satya Yuga) .
Satya Yuga: This is the age of the truth. In this Yuga, humans live in a harmonious society and no evil or diseases are said to exist. Humans are spiritually developed and are able to manifest things as and when they want with the blink of an eye. They are also in tune with nature and live in harmony with animals. The average height of a human is said to be around 32 ft in this Yuga, like the tall statues we see in Egypt.
Treta Yuga: This Yuga is similar to Satya Yuga but here the powers and virtues of humans begins to fade away slowly. Most people are positive and live harmoniously but a few bad elements start emerging in society who chase power and they are in small numbers. Humans aren't able to manifest as easily but they can still manage some of it but they need to chant mantras to do so. The average height is around 21 ft.
Dwapara Yuga: In this Yuga, people lose even more of their noble nature and powers. 50% of the humans are good intentioned and the other 50% are evil minded. People become sluggish and aren't as strong as their ancestors. Number of diseases increases and people become discontent with their lives. Since there is 50% good and 50% evil, people fight against each other. The average height is around 11 ft.
Kali Yuga: This is the age of darkness and ignorance. People go down the path of dishonesty and manipulation to pursue their selfish goals. Passion, lust and desires become uncontrollable and pleasure becomes the goal of life. Scriptures and books are burnt and ancient knowledge is not valued and made fun of. Environment, water, food becomes polluted and killings increase. The average height of a human in this age is around 5.5 ft.
Doesn't Kali Yuga remind you of our recent past? When kings used to wage wars on each other and millions of soldiers would die just to conquer a piece of land, Romans used to conduct fights and killings between slaves inside the colosseum just for the enjoyment of the elites, and also some of our current time situation where wars are being waged subtly?
However bad the situation may be in the current times, the knowledge that we are ascending the Yuga cycle gives me a hope that we are headed towards a better future than a dystopian one.
I haven't delved deeply into these topics in this article though. If you wish to learn more in depth about the Yugas, I would suggest you guys to read the books mentioned above and also the sources I mention below.
Having said that, I hope y'all are doing well during these stressful and challenging times! Things will change for the better soon so please stay strong.
We shall overcome the pandemic.
Thanks for reading guys. Do share your opinions!