CALCULATION OF ‘YUGA’ – CYCLE OF AGE OR EQUINOCTIAL CYCLES.

( BASED ON THE BOOK ‘HOLY SCIENCY’ BY THE ENLIGHTENED GURU SHRI YUKTESHWAR GIRI.

. THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS ARE FROM THE BOOK ‘AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI’ BY HIS DISCIPLE SHRI PARAMHANS YOGANAND (GIRI) WHERE A REFERENCE IS MADE TO THE ABOVE IN THE CHAPTER 16 ‘OUTWITTING THE STARS’ ).

(http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/chap16.php courtsy)

    “The starry inscription at one's birth, I came to understand, is not that man is a puppet of his past. Its message is rather a prod to pride; the very heavens seek to arouse man's determination to be free from every limitation. God created each man as a soul, dowered with individuality, hence essential to the universal structure, whether in the temporary role of pillar or parasite. His freedom is final and immediate, if he so wills; it depends not on outer but inner victories.

Sri Yukteshwar discovered the mathematical application of a 24,000-year equinoctial cycle to our present age.⁴

The cycle is divided into –

an Ascending Arc (aroha) and

a Descending Arc (avaroha),

each of 12,000 years.

Within each Arc fall four Yugas or Ages, called 

1. Kali,
2. Dwapara,
3. Treta, and 
4. Satya, 

corresponding to the Greek ideas of

5.     Iron,

6.      Bronze,

7.     Silver, and

8. Golden Ages.

My guru determined by various calculations that

·        the last Kali Yuga or Iron Age, of the Ascending Arc, started about A.D. 500.

·        The Iron Age, (Kali Yuga) 1200 years in duration, is a span of materialism;

·        It ended about A.D. 1700. That year ushered in Dwapara Yuga, a 2400-year period of electrical and atomic-energy developments, the age of telegraph, radio, airplanes, and other space-annihilators.

·        The 3600-year period of Treta Yuga will start in A.D. 4100; This age will be marked by common knowledge of telepathic communications and other time-annihilators.

·        During the 4800 years of Satya Yuga, final age in an ascending arc, the intelligence of a man will be completely developed; he will work in harmony with the divine plan.

·        A descending arc of 12,000 years, starting from 12500 A.D. with a descending Golden Age (Satya Yuga) of 4800 years,

·        then begins⁵ for the world. Man gradually sinks into ignorance. These cycles are the eternal rounds of maya, the contrasts and relativities of the phenomenal universe.⁶

Man, one by one, escapes from creation's prison of duality as he awakens to consciousness of his inseverable divine unity with the Creator.

(Note: 6 The Hindu scriptures place the present world-age as occurring within the Kali Yuga of a much longer universal cycle than the simple 24,000-year equinoctial cycle with which Sri Yukteswar was concerned. The universal cycle of the scriptures is 4,300,560,000 years in extent, and measures out a Day of Creation or the length of life assigned to our planetary system in its present form. This vast figure given by the rishis is based on a relationship between the length of the solar year and a multiple of Pi (3.1416, the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle).

The life span for a whole universe, according to the ancient seers, is 314,159,000,000,000 solar years, or "One Age of Brahma."

Scientists estimate the present age of the earth to be about two billion years, basing their conclusions on a study of lead pockets left as a result of radioactivity in rocks.

The Hindu scriptures declare that an earth such as ours is dissolved for one of two reasons: the inhabitants as a whole become either completely good or completely evil.

The world-mind thus generates a power which releases the captive atoms held together as an earth.)