Sat Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapar and Kali Yuga

Excerpts

Osho talks on the four yugas.

Hindus have divided time into four ages. The first is called sat yuga, the age of truth. That was in the very beginning of time. No historical record exists about it, no other kind of evidence exists for it; in fact, everything that exists gives evidence against it, because a man like Krishna, whom Hindus worship as the descendant of God in all his aspects, in his totality, even this man is not a man of truth. He lies. […]

Osho

There has never been such a time as the age of truth where everybody was authentic, honest, true to himself and to existence. But Hinduism is a very old religion, so you have to understand this psychological phenomenon. The child has no past, he has only a future. The old man has no future, but only the past. So all the old religions are past-oriented. They live in their yesterdays, naturally. […]

But it is not true that there was not violence, that there was not war, that there was not stealing. It is not true. But Hindus look at sat yuga as the golden age. And then began the fall.

Treta yuga has only three legs. The sat yuga had four, like a table with four legs. Now it is a tripod with three legs, not so balanced. It can topple over very easily, it is crippled. One essential part of humanity is lost.

If you want to understand it psychologically, the Hindu psychology explains it. In the sat yuga there was the collective unconscious mind, the subconscious mind, the conscious mind and the superconscious mind, and the superconscious mind was in power. All the three lower minds followed it. These are the four legs.

In treta yugatreta means three, the third; the English word third comes from the same root as treta, three, that has become three — the superconscious disappeared, the best part in man. Now there was conscious, subconscious, unconscious. Still, things were good… not that good. Before that time they were just divine; now they were human, but good, tolerably good. But a few things started happening which were not good. It is in the treta that Hindus think Jainism, Buddhism — this type of religion — arose, because to them these religions are very destructive. They destroyed the belief in God; they destroyed their very foundation, they destroyed the belief in the Vedas as created by God. They started joking and laughing about the Vedas, criticizing, and started asking for proof.

They started creating doubt. Doubt enters into humanity, faith disappears. And doubt, to the faithful, is one of the greatest diseases; it destroys his belief. So Jainas and Buddhists are called atheists by Hindus. They are not accepted as theists or religious people, no; they are the cause of destroying the religion. But still, although they denied God and they denied the Vedas, they valued immensely the qualities of truth, nonviolence, nonstealing, nonpossessiveness. So things went down, but still there was something valuable.

Then that age also disappeared. Man fell still more. Then comes dwapar. Dwapar means the second. Dwa is exactly twa, two. The word has the same root. English has almost thirty percent of its roots in Sanskrit. It is a Sanskrit-oriented language; so is German, so is Swedish, so is French, so is Italian, so is Russian. All European languages have from thirty to seventy percent Sanskrit roots.

In dwapar, only two legs remained. Man became really sick. Now the table has lost two legs and on only two legs, how can you make it balanced? It became almost impossible to have balance. In dwapar man lives subconsciously. The conscious mind has disappeared; now he lives instinctively.

He does not know why he is doing it, why this desire is in him, why a certain thing makes him happy or unhappy, but he goes on groping in the dark. But the dark is still not too thick; there is a little light, hence subconscious… a candlelight perhaps in the dark night.

But most of it is covered with darkness. There is just a little light that you call your intelligence, rationality — but just a little light which can be gone within a second; just a blow of the wind and it is gone. Somebody hits you and your intelligence has gone, and you are behaving completely like an animal. Somebody steps on your feet — and that’s enough, your intelligence has gone, and you are holding the man by the neck to kill him. Your intelligence is just a flickering light, at the mercy of any accident; it can go.

Then comes the last, kali yuga — the age of darkness, in which we are living now. According to Hindus this is the most fallen stage. Man is absolutely unconscious, drunk, insane. There is no future; there will be more and more darkness. All the best has passed. […]

What I am teaching here: Live so totally that you transform even that phenomenon of death into a door, a new opening for more abundant life. That life is just waiting, but only for those who know how to experience it, how to live it. And this is the time. Only today is the time. Neither yesterday nor tomorrow is the time to live life — only today.

Osho, From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, Ch 12, Q 1 (excerpts)

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