A new satyuga – a golden age – is possible

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Osho explains the four ages the Indian mystics call ‘satyuga’, ‘treta’, ‘dwapar’, and ‘kaliyug’, and declares that darkness and unconsciousness can only be broken by people whose life has become meditation.

Osho 194

For the new humanity, millions of changes are going to happen. One of the most major changes will be that the positive person has to become articulate. He has to say to the world what he is experiencing, without any fear, without any embarrassment, without any suspicions that it may be imagination. Even if it is imagination, it may do good.

But it is not imagination. You cannot imagine spiritual experiences; you don’t have any notion what they are. Unless you know them, there is no way of imagining them, and when you have known them, there is no question of imagination.

The people in the world are in immense need of a few articulate, positive, assertive individuals. Not only their words will be helpful, but their presence – because their words can only be supported by their presence, by their actions, by their responses. There is no other kind of evidence. If people see that you are really living peace, that your life is a song of silence and each of your actions shows it, we can change the whole negative and sick psychology of man.

Otherwise… these negative people have been predominant all through history – because it is very easy to be negative, anybody can do it. Anybody can say, even to Gautam Buddha, that “Whatever you are saying is all nonsense.” And even a man like Gautam Buddha cannot produce any evidence of his enlightenment. If the person is adamant, stubborn, closed, there is no way.

Buddha can help the person if he is open, vulnerable, receptive, ready to feel Buddha’s presence, ready to feel his fragrance, ready to become part of his silence. But most of the people in the world are living under the impact of negative people. This impact has created such an unconscious state… people go on falling more and more into unconsciousness, into darkness.

Sometimes I think that the Eastern idea has some psychological significance. It may not be true factually and historically, but psychologically… nobody has explored the idea. Just as Charles Darwin proposed the idea of evolution, the East has believed for thousands of years in a contrary idea of involution, not evolution; that man is not growing higher, but falling lower; that the first golden age was in the very beginning.

It is worth understanding the whole idea as a psychological interpretation – not as history, not as science, but as psychology.

The first age, according to the Eastern mystics is called satyuga, the age of truth, the golden age. In a way we can see that each man passes through that golden age again when he is a child. When the whole humanity was in its childhood, then the idea becomes very relevant. Children have to learn to speak lies; otherwise, they simply speak the truth, without any learning. Truth is not to be learned, it is just out of your innocence.

Lying needs learning, cleverness, cunningness, calculativeness.

Truth needs only innocence.

So the first age in the Eastern calculation was satyuga, the age of truth. They have called it ‘the golden age’. Their description is tremendously significant. Describing satyuga they say it was like a table with four legs, absolutely balanced. Satyuga had four legs, which kept it absolutely balanced. Then things started falling down.

The theory is exactly against Charles Darwin – I call it ‘involution’.

One leg dropped. The table became very unbalanced; life became unbalanced. Things were no longer the same as they had been – peaceful, silent, tranquil. With three legs, all balance was lost – but still, the table can be converted into a tripod. A tripod has three legs; some balance is still possible. This second age is called treta, because of three legs – treta means three. The English word ‘three’ comes from the Sanskrit root, tre, and treta also comes from the same root. Life was no longer golden. Innocence was lost – that was the leg that was missing – people became more clever, more cunning.

Then as days went by, things went down more. The third age is called dwapar. One more leg dropped; only two legs remained. All balance was lost. Dwapar is the same as the English word two. Dwapar comes from the Sanskrit root, dwa. Dwa has moved through many languages, reaching a few languages as twa… and by the time it reached the English language, it became two. But it is the same word. Life became ugly, more barbarous, with more exploitation, more negativity.

And we are in the fourth – one leg has fallen again; now we are standing only on one leg. The fourth is called kaliyuga, the age of darkness. And it seems certainly true that we are living in an age of darkness and unconsciousness. We are preparing for our own suicide – what more unconsciousness can there be? The future seems to be absolutely meaningless. It seems that every day the end of life is coming closer; the night goes on becoming darker and darker.

Even small children have been found in thousands taking drugs; it is no longer the new generation, it is no longer young people – school kids are taking drugs. School kids have been found murdering other children, school kids have been found raping girls – and not as an exception. In America they had a survey, and they could not believe… the government tried hard to repress it, not to let it be known to the world, but it leaked out.

The most advanced nation, most powerful, most scientifically, technologically advanced, is going through the darkest period in the whole of human history.

This unconsciousness can be broken only if the people whose life has become meditation, whose life has become a pure love, whose life has become a compassion, start waking up other sleeping people: “It is time – get ready. As the night becomes darker, the dawn is closer, but if you go on sleeping, dawn or no dawn, your night continues. Your eyes are closed, your darkness continues.”

Otherwise, a new dawn for the whole human race, a new innocence, a new childhood, a new satyuga – the age of truth a new golden age is possible. But the positive people have to take the bold step of expressing themselves. They have not been doing that for the whole of history. They have enjoyed their experience, and they have thought their work was finished.

I want you to remember always:

When you have something to share, don’t stop there; share it. Humanity is in need, as it has never been in need, of people who can create new hope for a new dawn.

Osho, The New Dawn, Ch 14, Q 1

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