Consider the Kali Yuga
In the first part of this article, I left off with a brief discussion of the Vedic/Hindu doctrine of the Yugas, the idea that history follows a cycle, corresponding to the Platonic doctrine of Aeons or ages (Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron, or “Dark” Ages).
Most Hindu accounts assign improbably long time periods to each of these ages, but one relatively modern thinker, Sri Yukteswar, the guru of the influential twentieth century yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda, wrote that originally, the Yuga cycle was supposed to correspond to a precessional cycle (Yukteswar allots approximately 24,000 years to this cycle, modern astronomy puts it close to 26,000 years but variable within narrow limits.
Plato gives a precise numerologically interesting canonical number of 25,920 years – six times six times six times 12). Moreover, in the standard accounts, the Kali Yuga (or Dark Age) is followed immediately by a new Golden Age. This does not make sense; the end of winter is not followed immediately by summer.
Now in Hindu mythology, Kali the Destroyer is equivalent to the Egyptian Sekhmet, and it may be that the Sekhmet myth has legitimate astronomical/astrological significance.
An aging or dying god is a feature of many ancient myths and legends and it is the mythic way of signaling the end of an astronomical cycle of some sort (cf. Hamlet’s Mill). Unfortunately, our standard view of history is not only very wrong, it is also very short. We have a good idea of the Piscean Age of the last 2,000 years, a much less comprehensive picture of the Arian Age preceding it (c. 2000-0 BCE), but in the Taurean Age (4000-2000 BCE), except for Egypt, we enter a realm of myth and legend with relatively little factual material to base sound interpretations upon. The further back we go, the mistier it gets.
The English writer Samuel Butler once remarked that, “Analogy may be misleading but it is the least misleading thing we have.”
So, to appreciate our own position within the grand Yuga cycle, analogy may help.
We are familiar with the cycle of night and day. But imagine a sentient creature that lives for just a minute. If that minute falls at midnight, then our Minute Man can have absolutely no idea of what that minute of life might be like at high noon, especially if it’s raining.
Now move up a step in the cyclical hierarchy to the seasons, and imagine a sentient creature that lives for just a day. If that day falls in February and it’s still raining (both Minute Man and Day Man live in Wales) then he can have no idea of what a day would be like in mid-June – unless, of course, legends and myths have somehow survived the course of the year, in which case they would be so inconsistent with their own life experience that they might well dismiss them as falsehoods, i.e. myths.
Now move up to ourselves, within the precessional cycle. Allowing an ideal 100 year life span, if that 100 years corresponds to a rainy midnight minute or equally rainy February day in Wales then we can have no experiential possibility of understanding what a sunny 100 years in June in Cosmic California might be like, much less that life might actually be much prolonged under such circumstances – as so many myths and legends assert.
There can be no doubt the ancients understood precession, and equally no doubt they considered it of paramount importance. And maybe that is why – because it enabled them (at least in principle) to live in harmony with the dictates of their era, or so the legends say.
So if there is validity to the concept of the Yuga cycle, just where would we stand? Not in June in Cosmic California, that is for sure! Scan the front page of any daily newspaper in the world and it looks like mid-January: war, terrorism, murder, rape, robbery, scams, famine and disease – chaos everywhere. The greatest military and economic power in recorded history has as its leader an inarticulate, illiterate dunce, himself under the control of a tribe of corporate cannibals.
The entire planet is threatened by a gamut of potentially terminal environmental, ecological, medical and military disasters. The institutionalised religions of both East and West (at their best but stunted, pale offshoots of much more robust and earlier root stocks) are degraded and degenerate. Education everywhere is controlled by the priesthood of the Church of Progress, forcibly proselytising its psychotic and spurious doctrine of meaninglessness, accident and despair.
A good case could be made that it’s mid-Kali Yuga, and Sekhmet has again been summoned and is already exercising her bloody trade. But this could be a misperception. Certainly a cosmic blizzard is blowing, of that there can be no doubt, yet maybe it’s March in the cycle – and even though it doesn’t look that way, spring is on the way. Under the snow, the seeds of spring are germinating. The substantial minority of us who aren’t trapped in hopeless third world conditions know that at the very least we’re not back in the post-Roman Dark Ages – which were pretty dark everywhere around the planet as far as we can determine.
Opposition to the Church of Progress Mounts: A Positive Sign
There is one potentially major positive sign that goes generally unrecognised. The past three centuries have seen a prodigious flowering of creative energy, most of it undeniably dedicated to destruction and frivolity (even the most nauseating TV commercial is the result of an extraordinary expenditure of creative and technical expertise).
While imbeciles insist upon calling this progress, in its standard manifestation it is little more than shiny barbarism.
Even so, that standard is not necessarily a fait accompli, an unalterable condition. The outpouring of creative energy is a fact. In itself it is neutral in principle. Directed consciously and constructively, things could change, everywhere – and in a hurry. When ideas change, everything changes. Of course, getting the ideas to change is another matter altogether. Nevertheless, it could happen. Even before it’s too late. If only…
Maybe, just maybe, Sekhmet is just growling and flexing her claws, and despite all appearances to contrary, there is still some wiggle room.
Is adversity really necessary
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Re: Is adversity really necessary
(very boring) - without adversity NO! (to learn by pain is a very low-key mechanism.)
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