The Vedic literature of India describes four Yugas (ages) repeated in never-ending cycles. The Vedic rishis passed this knowledge to the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. The Vedic Sat Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Kali Yuga became known in the West as the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age.
These four ages are not just chronological events on a horizontal time-line. They are simultaneous concentric spheres of energy emanating from the heart. If you want to return to Sat Yuga, the Golden Age, don't wait 432,000 years. Just return to your heart.
An awakened heart always lives during the Golden Age. This is why Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," and, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Surrendered to the light of the heart, one lives in heaven while on earth.
Enter the Golden Age of your heart by dissolving mental duality, and thus dissolving time, into primordial light. This happens through the grace of Guru Diksha, or initiation. The Mantra given by the grace of the Guru draws the mind effortlessly within, through subtler levels of perception, until awareness merges into the silence at the source of creation. Thus the path for Satya Yuga is the divine Name. It is effortless and graceful, and it transcends thought. The average mind does not want to hear this, because the ego wants to work, to strive, and to imagine that it knows something important. So, while the gate of heaven is open to all, most will turn away and choose a longer, more difficult path.
Around the heart circulates the subtle energy of Treta Yuga, the Silver Age. The realm of Treta Yuga is composed out of Prana, creative breath. The energy within our breath is more dense than the pure light of the heart, and extends outside it, pervading the cells of the body. Yet this sphere of silver-violet light is vibrant with health and beauty. The path for those who dwell in the Silver Age is Breath-Work.
When attention is further removed from the heart center, one falls into the duality of intellect and theoretical argument. Those who focus their lives in the mind live in Dvapara Yuga, the Bronze Age. They strife for noble thoughts and moral deeds, yet their striving is not without anxiety, competition, and envy. Intellectuals experience a secret dryness, no matter how much fine learning they attain, an aridity that deepens in proportion to their distance from the nectar of the heart. The path for Dvapara is reasoning. This produces clarity of mind and effective action, yet never leads to the bliss of God-Consciousness, for intellectuals find it most difficult to transcend thinking.
Finally, there are those who dwell in the Kali Age. They have allowed themselves to become completely deracinated from the heart. These people even use Iron Age metaphors to describe themselves: "nerves of steel," "iron will," "pumping iron." They actually choose hardness, coldness, and bitterness, qualities they think they need in order to survive a grueling and dangerous life, a life of constant lack. Of course, they create this world through their own thinking, but imagine that it comes to them as a curse from somewhere above. Living in the ignorance of Kali Yuga does not mean, however, that we must endure countless lifetimes until the return of the Golden Age. It simply means that we live far from our own hearts.
On any given day, you may walk through the city streets and meet many Iron Age people. You will meet others lost in their heads, living in the mental realm of Dvapara. You will meet a few vibrant energized bodies who live in Treta Yuga. And you may encounter an occasional soul who radiates the inner light of Sat Yuga. These four realms are not separated by duration, but by consciousness.
An Age of Enlightenment and an Age of Darkness interpenetrate one another as simultaneous concentric worlds. You are the time traveler with the freedom to live in heaven or hell, the dark past or the bright future. You chose your path to the age when, and where, you wish to dwell.
This is not an esoteric Eastern philosophy, but is eloquently revealed in the Christian scriptures. The Greek New Testament clearly states that there are two ways to envision time. One is Chronos, chronological time, the horizontal vector from past to future. Most humans bind themselves to the duration of Chronos through their own narrow linear thinking.
The other vision of time is Kairos: the eternal Now of heaven, which is the ever-present possibility of the kingdom. The kingdom of God breaks through consciousness into our lived experience whenever we choose faith, which is the energy of the heart. Commenting on a passage from Isaiah, St. Paul writes:
For he says, "At the right time I heard you, and on a day of salvation I helped you." Listen, now is really the "right time"! Now is the "day of salvation"! (1 Cor. 6:2)Why frustrate our minds by counting the hours, years, and centuries, when we can awaken eternity in our hearts this very day?
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