Cycles of Time: The Kali Yuga & Time as a Function of Consciousness

Flickr - Time - fdecomiteV. Susan Ferguson, Contributor
Waking Times

The 4 Ages are:

1. The Satya or Krita Yuga, a Golden Age

2. The Treta Yuga, the Age of Ritual

3. Dvapara Yuga, the Age of Doubt: Man loses the sense of the Divine Reality of the world and grows away from natural law

4. The Kali Yuga, the Age of Conflict and confusion began in 3012 BC and will end with the nearly total devastation of the present humanity

When you study the Hindu theory of the Cycles of Time and the yugas, you will find a confusing divergence of opinion concerning the dates of their duration. Considering that we are now living in the Age of Confusion, the Kali Yuga, it is not surprising to find so much disagreement on these matters.

Writing is the symptom of a degenerative culture

What is more important to me than precise numbers is the fact that we are living in an era where there is almost no memory of the previous cycles of time. Most of us wrongly believe that civilization begins with written history, however writing is actually the symptom of a degenerative culture – because it is sound that communicates meaning, not the markings that seek to represent it.

Reach beyond the limited frequencies of this Veil of Illusion you have been confined within – all of your lives. The experience of expanding and projecting your thoughts, consciousness and imagination back into primordial time is in itself liberating, revealing and uplifting.


  • The realization that time is in fact a function of consciousness will alter your perception of reality. We all experience time relative to our own specific consciousness. You can verify this for yourself by simply reflecting on, for example, how time flies when you are happy – as opposed how time drags when you are depressed or bored.

    Time does not exist outside the temporal illusory hologram.

    All increments, meaning measurements of time and space, are relative to the consciousness of the perceiver and thus the product of variations in waveform frequencies, based on and the result of the specific degree of the illusion of Separation from Oneness. This is similar to the quantum physics theory, The Copenhagen interpretation, Part II: Reality is created by observation. Or you might say more accurately, reality is created by the consciousness of the observer.

    In ‘While the Gods Play’, the French scholar Alain Danielou explains that the length of a moment is established by the rhythms of consciousness that perceive it:

    “It is energy, by producing vibratory waves having direction and length, that will give birth to the rhythms whose perceptions will create the dimension of time, the measure of space, and at the same time the structures of matter. … For man, the perception of the dimension of time is determined by his vital rhythms, his heartbeat…”

    The duration of each of the four yugas is relative to each other as 4:3:2:1. This implies that the Golden Age is the longest and our current Kali Age is the shortest. In a Twilight of the Kali Yuga, time actually continues to speed up and increases ever more so, as we reach the end. The cycles of time are rather like classical Indian Ragas that begin slowly, serene, increase in tempo and passion, and end in a frenzy of energy.

    Alain Danielou’s dates differ from others. Danielou says that the Twilight of the Kali Yuga began in 1939 with the discovery of atomic fission. According to him, the final catastrophe will take place during this twilight and the last traces of this present mankind will have disappeared in 2442. This doesn’t necessarily imply that we have an extra 400 years to fool around in. God only knows what earth changes will be taking place on this planet during that time.

    In Hindu metaphysics of time is cyclical and each period of manifestation is called a KALPA of Brahma, equivalent to 4.32 billion human year.

    The KALPA is subdivided into 14 MANVANTARAS.

    We are now in the seventh MANVANTARA of this KALPA.

    Each MANVANTARA is divided into 71 MAHA-YUGAS of 4,320,000 years each.

    We are in the 28th MAHA-YUGA of this MANVANTARA.

    Each MAHA-YUGA is made up of four yugas

    Each Yuga is preceded by a period of a dawn and followed by a period of twilight. [Linga Purana 1.4.3-6]

    The KALI YUGA, the Age of Conflict & Confusion 

    The Kali Yuga is the only yuga most of us are familiar with because we have been living all our lives within these dense frequencies. Our mind, the way we think, and thus our perception of ‘reality’ has literally been cooked by the vibratory frequencies of time within the Kali Yuga. We humans have been ‘cooked by time’ to the point that only the fives senses remain available to us to understand the world around us. The five senses are easily confused.

    The five senses can indeed be programmed and tricked by tyrannical wizards who want to control our lives. Today’s monopoly media is very aware of how to entrain and manipulate the five senses. In our modern world most of the information received around the planet suits the agendas of the multinational corporations, who also happen to own the monopoly media.

    The five senses are vulnerable to deceit and manipulation by any and all. In other cycles of time, information gathered solely by the five senses would have been highly suspect. The ancient Rishis, ‘SEERS’ – those who see – were trusted as the source of wisdom concerning mankind’s future and our interconnection with the Cosmos.

    It is only the ‘SEER’ within you, the one who has quieted the mind and achieved a connection to the God-within, who can offer insight into the true nature of reality. Only an inner-knowingness can lead us out of our current predicament – out of our miasma of amnesia, the soup we are still ‘cooking’ in. Only by transcending differentiated perception, the illusory powers of the five senses, and an understanding of GUNAMAYA, will we human beings return to the Real.

    There are numerous descriptions of the symptoms of the Kali Yuga in the ancient Sanskrit Puranic texts. Bear in mind that writing is itself a symptom of the Kali Yuga. These texts were composed and transmitted orally in the previous cycles of time and handed down through memory, based on verbatim repetition, from one generation to the next. It was only in 500 BC that the grammarian Panini codified the Sanskrit language and these memorized texts were put into the form of writing. Sanskrit’s arduous precision was intentionally designed to protect the ancient knowledge from the confusion ensuing in the Kali Yuga.

    The symptom that completely convinced me that the Cycles of Time were true was this: “Ready cooked food will be on sale.” [LINGA Purana Ch. 40] The ancients foresaw ‘fast food’! They knew that pre-prepared food loses its nutritional value.

    The Light is primarily unmanifest, hidden.

    The Kali Yuga is the Age of Darkness. The Light is primarily unmanifest, meaning not completely gone, just veiled and hidden in the Kali – and the Darkside rules. You can lighten the world around you by realizing and Remembering the God-within you, and by letting that frequency flow out around you. Even if people don’t accept what you say, they will be uplifted by your silent consciousness.

    However don’t expect them to love you or even like you. Their Kali Yuga egos are firmly enthroned and will feel unconsciously threatened by your presence. The small identity-self ego has no wish to give up its power and if the person is unwittingly hosting denizens of the Phantasmal Hierarchies – perhaps in the form of an addiction to drugs, alcohol, or tyrannical power – then these parasitical entities will attack you and do just about anything to get you away from their ‘food’ supply!

    The Kali Yuga seems to actually reward the Darkside, those ruthless ratzoids that are weak and greedy, liars without any integrity, morals, or principles often succeed. While the maverick thinkers, who possess a quiet sense of honor, who feel compassion for others, and respect primordial truth, are quickly pushed aside and berated, often brutally and publicly, by the elite.

    In today’s culture almost everything that is being held up to us as great, desirable, and worthy is a short-term fix and sadly – rubbish. All of the power and money in the world will not give you the Remembrance of Oneness. The fastest red-hot racecar available will not bring you to the destination of enlightenment and liberation – JIVAN MUKTI. The pleasures enjoyed with the most gorgeous super model, male or female, will soon become tiresome and a burden.

    As Krishna says, both pleasure and pain reside in the objects of the senses:

    “… the pleasures that spring from sense impressions are sources of unhappiness, because they have beginnings and ends.” – Bhagavad Gita V.23

    Another strange phenomenon of the Kali Yuga is the externalization of faith to such an extreme that people became obsessed and crazed with their individual belief systems. For 1000s of years now human beings have, in the name of their various interpretations of God, inflicted endless stupid destructive wars on each other – mass murder, torture, theft, and slavery all in the name of God!

    When you realize that God is within each and every man woman & child, the idea of forcing any religion upon another is the height of absurdity!

    Corrupt priests have been the willing accomplices to such heinous conflicts. They often became the imaginative torturers of non-believers and even sold tickets-to-heaven in the form of ‘indulgences’ to the rich, to line their own pockets, and build enormous, however lovely, cathedrals and temples while many of the common people remained perpetually close to starvation.

    The Age of Confusion is mobbed by – yes, confusion! Practically everything you have ever read is clouded over by the miasma of Kali Yuga fog. As the saying goes: History is written by the conquerors – while the loser’s side of the story is routinely forgotten.

    When you think about it, throughout most of written history all the great works of Art are the symbols of propaganda bought and paid for by ruling tyrants and religions seeking to dominate the world’s populations. Just ask Leonardo da Vinci who worked for the likes of Cesare Borgia, or Michelangelo who labored under the iron hand of a Vatican priest. Today’s artists are often answerable to the power of big money from the multinational corporations that own our world.

    Even the wonderful descriptions of enlightenment that give us all hope were not experienced in the density of time we currently are living in. With no disrespect intended, it occurs to one that Lao Tzu, Jesus, and Buddha did not have to fight off chemtrails, microwaves, endocrine disrupting chemicals, or childhood television programming!

    These days, in the Twilight of the Kali Yuga, it’s the Razor’s Edge – every step of the way Home. 

    Knowledge of our essential Oneness is hard to come by in the Kali Yuga. Beneath the curtain of multiplicity – there is only ONE! This means that behind the apparent diversity of billions of individuals living on planet Earth, they are all only One. All are the ONENESS.

    For those of you who have remembered past lives, you may have noticed a striking perplexing similarity in the basic character of each life. There may be certain repeating flaws and compulsions, traits or qualities that you begin notice have shown up over and over in lifetime after lifetime. You may be a high priest in Atlantis, or a dancing slave girl in 8th century Kashmir – but there is a pattern that continues throughout all your lives. This is because the genes in your current physical body are the latest ‘product’ of a long line of many bodies, lineages. You have access to the memories contained within the DNA of the body you currently inhabit.

    It is as if the Creator generates certain rays or waveforms, which contain qualities of expression that remain in the genes throughout the cycles of time. As time descends down through the yugas further and further into density and ‘apparent’ solidification, ever more variations of expression are created, such as habits, impulses, likes & dislikes, etc. etc.

    But underneath all this temporal multiplicity is the Oneness that we all are: meaning you and me, factory workers in China and the farmers of rural India, the world leaders and corporate tyrants, the Aborigines in Australia and the Pigmy tribes in Africa. We are all ONENESS beneath the temporal illusory Curtain of Multiplicity. This knowledge of Oneness has been hidden from us in the Kali Yuga, but once you truly Realize the God-within, you will Become that which you always have been.

    The floodgates of Knowledge and Love will open – and you will never be the same. You will never be able look at another human being without compassion and you will never again judge them – for you will KNOW that YOU ARE THEM! As you judge them, so you judge and condemn yourself. And it turns out that as harrowing, dreadful and boring as the Kali Yuga is – in fact it is the fast lane to God Realization. The intensity of the Kali Yuga pressures you to WAKE UP!

    Time does not exist outside the temporal illusory holographic matrix. Thus the Four Cycles of Time are simultaneous as are all your so-called ‘past’ lives.

    Acceptance of the theory of the Cycles of Time might lead you to a sort of complacent resignation. After all, if we are ineluctably snared in the frequencies of confusion – then why bother? Because what is really exciting about the Kali Yuga is the understanding that in fact it is the easiest cycle to Remember who you are. The end of the Kali Yuga is a particularly favorable period to pursue true knowledge.

    “Some will attain wisdom in a short time, for the merits acquired in one year during the Treta Yuga can be obtained in one day in the age of Kali.” –  [Shiva Purana, A. Danielou]

    45. Hence during the Kali longevity, strength, and features become less and less. Men attain perfection within a short time.

    46-47. What is gained by the practice of dharma for a year in the Treta Yuga is attained by the practice of it for a month in the Dvapara Yuga. In Kali an intelligent devotee attains the same in a day by practicing Dharma strenuously. – [Linga Purana, Section1, Chapter 40]

    It’s a Cosmic Bargain Sale of sorts!  Therefore, take up the challenge to Remember who you are! Do not give in! So, the Darkside is fulfilling its own kind of dharma, doing its job of spreading the hand of tyranny over the planet and poisoning everything in its wake. What will you do? In these moments of challenge, of sorrow and of awakening consciousness, how will you behave? Can you find courage within yourself and compassion for others? Can you master the divine detachment that comes from knowing that what is unfolding is the grand Cosmic Design. Can you remember that every one and everything is God, Oneness – and this ONE is you.

    You are this world, and you are the Love that breathes this temporal illusory holographic matrix out into multiplicity and inhales it back into quiescence – and back out again, eon after eon after eon. World without end! This universe is here for us all to play in. Surely, when you look at your life or perhaps many lives, in spite of all the pain, you do recognize the grand beauty of Creation.

    Thus the question is what will you do now in this intensified exciting moment? And are you ready to move on into one of the 1000s of other universes – some without polarities or form or even time – all waiting, inviting you to come to yet another magnificent adventure in consciousness.

    Symptoms of the Kali Yuga

    Writing itself is a symptom of the Kali Yuga. Human beings have been living on planet Earth for 100s of 1000s of years before we have any record of the written word. From the Sanskrit texts the Vishnu Purana and the Linga Purana:

    Thieves will become kings, and kings will be the thieves.

    Rulers will confiscate property and use it badly. They will cease to protect the people.

    Base men who have gained a certain amount of learning (without having the virtues necessary for its use) will be esteemed as sages.

    There will be many displaced persons, wandering from one country to another.

    Predatory animals will be more violent.

    Fetuses will be killed in the wombs of their mothers.

    People will prefer to choose false ideas.

    No one will be able to trust anyone else.

    People will be envious.

    There will be many children born whose life expectancy is no more than 16 years.

    People suffering from hunger and fear will take refuge in underground shelters.

    Young girls will do trade in their virginity.

    The god of clouds will be inconsistent in the distribution of the rains.

    Shopkeepers will run dishonest businesses.

    There will be many beggars and unemployed people.

    Everyone will use hard and vulgar language.

    Men will devote themselves to earning money; the richest will hold power.

    The state leaders will no longer protect the people but, through taxes, will appropriate all wealth.

    Water will be lacking.

    [And my favorite]: Pre-cooked food will be readily available!

    The fact that our food supply contains very little nutrition and is full of toxins reveals a great deal to me about the frequencies of Time we live in.

    (From the Sanskrit texts the Vishnu Purana and the Linga Purana; and also a remarkable book entitled, While the Gods Play: Shiva Oracles and Predictions on the Cycles of History & the Destiny of Mankind, by Alain Danielou; Inner Traditions International Ltd., paperback, 1985.)

    About the Author

    V. Susan Ferguson is the author of Inanna Returns, Inanna Hyper-Luminal; her own commentary on the Bhagavad Gita and the Shiva Sutras; and Colony Earth & the Rig Veda. Her website is Metaphysical Musing.

    This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.

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