The Real Meaning of the Four Yugas
तदेतत् सत्यं मन्त्रेषु कर्माणि कवयो यान्यपश्यंस्तानि त्रेतायां बहुधा संततानि। तान्याचरथ नियतं सत्यकामा एष वः पन्थाः सुकृतस्य लोके ॥
tadetat satyaṁ mantreṣu karmāṇi kavayo yānyapaśyaṁstāni tretāyāṁ bahudhā saṁtatāni. tānyācaratha niyataṁ satyakāmā eṣa vaḥ panthāḥ sukṛtasya loke.
This is That, the Truth of things: works which the sages beheld in the Mantras were in the Treta manifoldly extended. Works do ye perform religiously with the one passion for the Truth; this is your road to the heaven of good deeds.
~ Mandukya Upanishad, Part 2, Verse 1
Acharya Prashant: The Rishi proclaims:- This is That, the Truth of things: works which the sages beheld in the Mantras were in the Treta manifoldly extended.
What’s happening here? Something is hidden in this. All right, let’s discover. So, the four Yugas . In the Vedic tradition, there have been Satya Yuga , Treta , Dvapara , Kali . Now, what do they represent? Do they represent the passage of time? Do they represent something historical? We have been led to believe that way, right? We believe that time is something external that happens to us. It's something happening in the clock or in the watch and it's happening in spite of us, or outside of us. We take it as an objective entity.
So, this is the mug (refers to a mug kept on table) outside of me, and let's say this is a watch (refers to a watch kept on table). So, we start thinking of the four Yugas in the usual way. We say Satya Yuga was ‘x’ years long or ‘x’ thousand or ‘x’ million years long and stretched from this date approximately to this date. And then we say, “Next came the next Yuga , and it dated from one particular point to the next one,” almost like months in a calendar, right? That's how we look at the concept of Yugas , correct? Let’s say, we are currently in December. So, we like to say that September was Satya Yuga , and then came October, and then November, and right now, it's Kali Yuga running. That's the way we are accustomed to think.
Something is amiss here. That's not the way Vedanta looks at time; Vedanta just does not look at time as an external entity. Vedanta talks only of two: the Atman and the mind. If there is just Atman and mind, what is this third thing called time? What is this third thing called time? Surely this third thing has to be one of the two elements that Vedanta deals in. Time obviously is not Atman because Atman is changeless and time denotes change. So, time is mind. So, these four Yugas , they surely are states of mind. Surely, they are not one particular linear progression as we traditionally believe, there is something else there. Are you getting it?
So, then what is Satya Yuga ? Satya Yuga is when the mind is totally centred in the Self, the Truth. Treta is when the mind is identified with thoughts. Dvapara is the body, and Kali Yuga is saṃsāra . So, there is indeed a movement here and the movement is progressively away from the centre. When the mind is closest to the centre, you call it Satya Yuga ; and when the mind is farthest from the centre, you call it Kali Yuga . Which means some of us might be in this moment in Satya Yuga , you are already living in Satya Yuga . It’s not as if we are condemned to live all our life in Kali Yuga . And unfortunately, some of us might be intermittently slipping away to Kali Yuga .
When you are living a Truth-centered life, you are living in Satya Yuga . When you are living a world-centred life, you are living in Kali Yuga . That's how we are to comprehend it. These are not spans on the calendar. These are not expanses in chronology, these are simply states of mind. Are you getting it?
So, what's the Rishi saying here? He's saying, “That which originated in Satya Yuga , got expanse, manifestation in Treta Yuga .” Which is right, because Truth originates from the Self and then through the poet-seers, finds expression in language; and language is thoughts, you know. Even if you are extremely meditative, yet language necessitates some degree of thought, otherwise, you will not be able to speak at all. How will you remember which word to use? Even if you are extremely meditative, even if you are totally centred in the Truth, yet you will have to retain some of your memory to express what you are seeing. So, when the seers express themselves, they have to maintain a very thin distance from the Truth; otherwise, they will recede into a great blissful silence.
Their silence will be wonderful for them but not useful for the world. And the Rishis have students sitting in front of them—remember the setting is that of Upanishads—it's a face-to-face conversation. The Rishi has to speak because the student cannot relate with the silence of the seer. The silence is beautiful but totally internal, it cannot be transferred or communicated. Only words can be communicated, and words as we said, necessitate memory, which in turn is thought.
So, what is being actually said here is that—That which originates from the centre finds expression via the seer through thoughts and words. And what's the name of that expression? The name of that expression is the Upanishads. So, what does Treta stand for here? The expression that is rooted in Satya Yuga . The silent root in Satya Yuga finds poetic expression in Treta Yuga . That does not mean that the root waited for a few million years to find expression. Because we are not talking of calendar events here; we are not dealing in history here. We are dealing in mind here.
Questioner: About the time, the Yugas as the state of mind; so, maybe I am asking this question because for the first time, I have heard this type of definition. So, for example, it is mentioned in our mythological stories that, Daśaratha in his old life, he kept tapasyā for thousands of years, and then got Rāma .
So, I saw one of your videos about the Big-bang theory, where you told that, “Time is something that starts from you”. So, can you throw some more light on it? I am not able to get it when you say, “Time is something that starts from you,” and about the Yugas as a state of mind.
Acharya Prashant: See, first thing about mythological stories—in the spiritual world, stories are for kids. They have importance, and the importance is that when a seeker is not prepared enough, then you entertain or prepare him with stories. So, that's why every religious order or tradition has a lot of stories. Why? Because a lot of people are always immature and unprepared; you cannot give them the bare Truth. So, what do you give them? You give them stories; you say, “Better stories than nothing.”
So, don't take mythological stories too seriously. While you have to also remember that all mythological stories contain the Truth at their centre, yet a story is not just its centre. A story is the entire narrative, the entire expanse, the twists and the turns, the entire build-up, the ebb and the flow, and the whole thing; and that not really is the Truth. That just really is something that keeps you captivated, at the same time also keeps you in the loop that spirals up in a way. An upward spiral—it's a loop that takes you gradually upwards. So, that's the whole purpose of stories.
Now, about time. It's very straightforward. If nothing changes at all, would you say, “Time has lapsed?” No. That's what time is: Something that you use to measure change. If within you and without you, nothing changes at all, then time stands frozen. And where is it that all the change happens? Mind. Therefore, mental activity is another name for time. If the mind is very restless and change is happening frequently, then you talk of time in a particular way. And if the mind is tranquil and there is not much change, then you talk of time in a different way.
Spirituality is not concerned with changes that you see here and there. So, right now what I have said pertains more to your inner time. Now, even when your inner time stands still, you could argue that externally, things will keep happening. Though, even that can be contested. You see, without any change happening, even the clock would cease to move. Some change has to happen somewhere. In fact, the very movement of the clock is the change. Just think of the inner world (points to the head). Here, time is all about your inner state. So, always look at time in that way.
Questioner: The way you defined time in physical world and in spiritual world, are they different?
Acharya Prashant: They are not really different because the spiritual world covers the physical world. But to begin with, you think of the or try to understand the inner world. There are no two different worlds. It’s not as if the inner world and external world are different, and hence, have different rules and different concepts of time. Though, that has been said at some places—they talk of chronological time and psychological time—but even that distinction is arbitrary, however, it is useful. To begin with, it is useful to just look at the psychological aspect of time.
Questioner: So, currently, there is one more myth which is going on and which is claimed by a very famous concurrent guru. So, in that definition he defines these four Yugas as a movement of the sun across the galactic centre and when the sun is nearest to that galactic centre, there are “Satya Yugas" and Treta Yugas and when it is farthest, because it is an ecliptical movement; so, when it is farthest it is Kali Yuga .
I simply laughed at that but there are millions of people who believe in this model of Satya Yuga , Kali Yuga and all that as galactic distance between the sun and the Galactic centre of the Milky way. So, can you speak something on that sir?
Acharya Prashant: I wouldn’t have wanted to end it on this (audience laughs). What do I say? I'm not used to speaking much on extreme foolishness. I feel helpless about that but what do I do? I can only say what is the Truth and put the reality in front of you. What do I do if they command the resources and everything else? What do I do if they are the ones having the reach to make their nonsense penetrate every home, every gullible mind? What do I do?
The thing that you are talking of, I don't know whether it's there in a video or a book or whatever, that video would have reached maybe a million people, more than a million people. This conversation that we are having would at most reach a few thousand. It's a game of resources. It's not as if the fellow is so damn charming that people are flocking to him; it's about the money that's being put into the channel.
So, what do we do? It's below me to even denounce this. A class eight student is very suitably placed to tear this apart, an above average class eight student. But these are the perpetrators of foolishness, merchants of superstition. They trade in nonsense, they feed on your vulnerabilities and ignorance. They very well know that you do not know, you know neither geography or mathematics, nor do you know the laws of planetary motion. These are not too difficult to know—basic Newtonian physics. But he knows that the bulk of the world's population either does not know these things or does not care to apply the knowledge that they have. So, they come up with any kind of outrageous crap, and it circulates; that's what I have been talking about. It's sickening! After a point, it does not even provoke resistance or revolt. It's simply sickening; you can, you can just puke at it. How do you fight an earthworm? As a man, I take pride in fighting demons; I'll be glad to meet my end fighting a monster. But how do I respond when faced with an earthworm? And, I do not know what to make of the situation. That earthworm rules, and he has multiplied himself into billions. That's what this new world is all about—insult to Science and insult to Spirituality, rolled into one, and it's a fantastic combo.
It has to be fought. We'll see what to do or how to marshal the resources; what to do, what not to do. On one hand, it's a pain to be living in an age where the highest you can fight is an earthworm. This is the central narrative, the overriding story of our age. Even the biggest demons are simply like that; it is demeaning because you know there is no glory in fighting an unglorified enemy. Ram is Ram because he had a Ravan to fight against. Look at the dignity and the glory inherent in Ravan and then look at our age. We have to fight earthworms, and probably it's more difficult than fighting a Ravan.
