The state of consciousness on the planet among humanity has gone through varying levels of clarity or ignorance over the course of history. We have heard of the Dark Ages, around the 14th century, which was allegedly due to a few centuries of degraded weather, or a mini ice age. There are, however, much bigger cycles and periods of time known as the four great ages in the ancient Vedic Sanskrit texts of ancient India. And during these periods, lasting many thousands of years each, humanity is alleged to have gradually diminished in consciousness until today.
These four great ages (in Sanskrit known as “yugas”) began at the dawn of creation with the longest age, Sattya Yuga – the golden age. Thereafter we had a slightly shorter Treta Yuga – the silver age, followed by an even shorter Dwapara Yuga – the copper age, and since around 5000 years ago we entered the last part of the cycle – Kali Yuga – the iron age. In this present age, which is predicted to continue for another several thousand years, we are at our most ignorant regarding consciousness as a civilization.
According to this ancient legend, humanity has been in much more advanced states than the current one. We could perhaps see a similarity here to the reference of Atlantis, which was said to be a previous time some thousands of years back, where civilization was more advanced than presently. Technology was superior, and the state of consciousness was more enlightened, to the degree that people had greater abilities, or what we might call mystic powers today.
So as much as we might like to think that we have made advancement since the Dark Ages of our recent history, we have in fact remained in a comparative dark age for the past 5000 years, since the end of the previous Yuga or great age. We no longer see people with developed powers of consciousness, like mystic powers (known as “siddhis” in Sanskrit), although this was prevalent in previous ages. Still we think ourselves advanced today, based on our extremely limited perspective of reality and time.
Now in this cyclic journey of humanity through the ages, which repeat eternally over millions of years, there are periods of awakened consciousness as well as relatively ignorant or degraded consciousness as the baseline among humanity as a whole. Curiously it is at times of severe degraded consciousness that we hear of the advent or appearance among society of divine incarnations who come to assist the world in our plight.
For example, in the ancient Sanskrit text Bhagavad Gita, written down 5000 years ago, at the end of the previous Dwapara Yuga, we hear Krishna describe his appearance in this way:
यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत ।
अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥ ७ ॥
yadā yadā hi dharmasya
glānir bhavati bhārata
abhyutthānam adharmasya
tadātmānaṁ sṛjāmy aham
“Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion – at that time I descend Myself.”
Bhagavad Gita As It Is chapter 4:7 translated by Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta
The word “religion” is actually a translation of the word “dharma” as you can see in the text above. Dharma can be described as not just religion, in the sense that we use the word today, but more like “constitutional position” or true nature. Our constitutional position as eternal consciousness, temporarily resident in the material body, is one of service to the original source, as well as living a refined civilized life, in awakened awareness of our true identity.
When you realize your true identity as connected to all life, which all originates from the same source, you naturally respect and protect life in all its manifestations. This is our true nature or our dharma. Today the word is loosely translated as “religion” but the concept goes much deeper. We have fallen into such deep ignorance in this iron age of Kali, that we have little concept of what our true nature is and therefore little awareness of how to behave as civilized society, or how to utilize our dormant potentials, even if we call ourselves religious, based on the modern understanding of the term.
Essentially the process of religion is literally, based on the Latin, a path of connecting to the source. It is the same as the term “yoga” which means “to link up or connect with source”. Still, at times in history when society falls into ignorance, we are told in this text here today that source manifests personally to address the situation. These are the various avatars (in the original sense of the Sanskrit word) or incarnations of divinity over the millions of years of the history of the planet.
The most popular is Buddha, who is described in the Vedas as the ninth out of ten major incarnations of Vishnu, the original source or Godhead. If we look at the verse above, we can see the word “glanih” which literally translates as “discrepancies”. If we take the example of Buddha, who was a person like you and I who became empowered by the “shakti” or potency of the divinity, (and is therefore a minor manifestation or incarnation, compared to other direct incarnations), we hear from the Sanskrit Vedas that during his appearance around 2600 years ago, society had become degraded.
The Vedic brahmana priests of ancient India had become degraded. There is a vast literature regarding the process of worship and offering of sacrifices, which originally were offerings of precious metals, or ghee into the fire. There were also minor references to animal sacrifice, but this was only for certain times and practices, where the priest would have the mystic ability to offer an old animal into the fire of sacrifice, and chant the right mantras with such potency that the animal would emerge rejuvenated, not killed. Unfortunately by the time Buddha appeared, the priests had already lost this ability. As a result animals were being killed instead and the priests had degraded to a position of allowing the animals to be eaten.
To remedy this degradation Buddha appeared to re-establish the Vedic injunction of “ahimsa” or non-violence. He taught his followers to rather give up the Vedic path of following the corrupted priests and simply follow him. This led to the path known today as Buddhism. In much earlier times during the four great ages, God or source or divinity appeared in other much more powerful and direct incarnations, in order to address the degradation of those times. Usually it was to fight and kill some massive demon who had arisen and taken over the planet for a while.
In conclusion then, civilization is much older that we know, humans are much more powerful than we realize and the path of awakened consciousness is much deeper and more detailed than we can even imagine toady, based on our paltry education from ignorant teachers and prophets in modern history. If you want to know the details, then I recommend going to the source codes, the original texts of consciousness on the planet, known as the Vedas, of which Bhagavad Gita is the most popular and easy to comprehend.
The Gita is actually a minor Vedic reference, compared to the four vast major Vedic volumes of literature, and is part of the fifth Veda. Nevertheless, for simple souls like us, it is the best introduction to Vedanta and I make it my most important book of all time.
(image pixabay)
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