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..:: Kali Yuga::..
By
Alan Schneider
For the true significance of Kali Yuga to
be understood, the discussion of this matter must begin with the Hindu
Godhead, for this mechanism of consciousness and manifestation is the
home of Shiva, the Destroyer of Forms on the Physical Plane, and
the male counterpart of Kali, the Black Goddess of Destruction.
The preexisting condition to
the Godhead is simply referred to in Hindu tradition as the Brahman,
and is represented as the all-pervasive essence of God that
simultaneously infuses all objects and conditions knowable in any terms
anywhere, and yet is not literally present as either a concept or an
object that can be grasped by human awareness. The presence of the
Brahman can only be sensed intuitively from the highest states of
conscious expression of which we are capable as physical beings. The
Brahman is the supreme non-dual Manifestation – entirely beyond subject
and object, and beyond the perception of the ego for that very reason,
unless full Ascension has occurred within consciousness. In this case,
the Divine Interface has been initialized, and the ego’s method of
perceiving has been augmented with the Self’s method of Total Conscious
Perception. However, although this state of awareness can be
achieved, doing so generally requires a lifetime of sacrifice,
suffering, and austerity – a very intimidating prospect for most
of us, steeped as we are in material comfort!
The Brahman is conceived of
as being essentially female in character, because it flows into,
and thereby pervades everything, and flow is a characteristic of water.
The receptivity of water has been universally identified as a
female trait in every culture in history. The Brahman becomes expressed
at a certain point, and under certain conditions, as Brahma, the
Creator God, and becomes a male manifestation at that point.
Manifest expression and definition of form are considered to be
fundamentally male traits in most of history’s cultures. Brahma actually
has some characteristics of personification and identity,
although these are defined in scope and action, unlike the Brahman,
which is limitless, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Brahma is the initiator
of all acts of manifestation on all the Planes attainable. On the
Physical Plane, He creates the universe that human beings perceive in
the senses as “reality”. He is frequently represented as a simple
point – the origin expression at the center of Hindu mandalas and
other visual Yantra depictions. It is from this dimensionless, but
nonetheless present, point that all Creation issues forth into some kind
of manifest expression – shape, form, process, object, feeling, fantasy,
dream, or idea.
Without the action of the
next Entity in the Godhead, all that Brahma creates would immediately be
annihilated by Shiva, and Creation would be manifest in an amorphous
instant suspended in spacetime. This subsequent entity to Brahma is
Vishnu, the Preserver of Forms. It is Vishnu who sustains the universe
as an act of Cosmic Love and compassion, establishing the possibilities
of Karma and Salvation for the Soul, which could not otherwise exist in
the face of Shiva’s onslaught of destruction. Vishnu extends the instant
of experience into the perception of time and space as experienced by
human consciousness during the human lifespan.
Now we are ready to consider
Shiva, the Destroyer God, who has the task of removing that which has
exhausted its Karma, and is ready to be excised from existence, as
everything in this world of transient manifestation does, my friends –
everything material and external, that is. Shiva is the most “human” of
the three entities of the Godhead, in terms of His psychology and
apparent behavior in the universe – displaying both emotional outbursts,
and the sedate composure of deep meditation, a lover of His Shaktis (or
Female Expressions), an explorer and adventurer, and
simultaneously an esthetic existing in austerity. Presumably, only the
grace associated with complete detachment and meditation makes it
possible for Shiva to fulfill His terrible function in the Hindu Triad
of Godforms.
Each God has corresponding
Female Expressions, already referred to above as Shaktis. The Shakti of
Brahma is known as Saraswati, the Goddess of Creativity, Music, and the
Arts. The Shakti of Vishnu is Lakshimi, the Goddess of Wealth and
Abundance. Shiva, on the other hand, has several Shakti expressions,
including his first “wife” Uma, who immolated herself in humiliation
because her father could not accept her husband’s crude ways and
appearance (Shiva dresses in animal skins, and rubs Himself with ashes
from the cremation grounds). This act sent Shiva into such a fit of
grief and rage that he attempted to incinerate all of Creation at one
blow, and was only stopped by the implacable resistance of Brahma and
Vishnu. His second wife was Parvati the Voluptuous, and she fared better
than Uma, being presumed to still be with Shiva today. Another of
Shiva’s Shaktis is Durga, She Who Stands Alone, usually in combat
against Demonic influences as an “Amazon” Warrior Queen. However it is
Kali who is universally feared and respected as Shiva’s most
ferocious and destructive Shakti form of all. The following discussion
will illustrate why.
The relationship between the
Male and Female form of the Deities in Hinduism is very significant. The
Male form generates conceptual structures – ideas, plans, designs
– that the Female form then carries out into manifestation
in some kind of actual, final expression. So it is that Kali carries out
Shiva’s intentions under circumstances where all other forms pale in
comparison. Even Durga, whose four arms each carry a lethal weapon, and
who rides a tiger as her mount, is not as formidable as Kali. Why? It is
Kali’s spiritual identity that explains this so well.
Kali is almost always
represented in Hindu sacred art as an insane black female dancer, a
dancer manifesting absolute chaos and destruction as the outcome
of her movements. She is shown with her tongue drooling and protruding,
three eyes rolling crazily about in different directions, and wearing a
belt composed of the severed heads of the Princes of the Earth, all of
whom fell before her sword! This object she holds in one hand while
holding a newborn child in the other, symbolizing her absolute power
over life and death. A more terrifying image cannot be imagined, and
does not to my knowledge exist, in either the Western or Eastern mystery
traditions. Even the Christian Devil is not so menacing a figure, in
part because he does not exhibit the key element in the formula of
irrational destruction that Kali does exhibit – insanity.
As an entity, Lucifer still has an integrated intent and purpose – the
Fall of Humanity. Kali does not, raining arbitrary and incomprehensible
destruction down upon human beings under all circumstances and
conditions, no matter how secure they may have appeared to be. Moral
deterioration or transgression are not required, and moral rectitude and
uprightness are not protection! Kali takes us all eventually, and
frequently under the most humiliating and degrading circumstances
imaginable. A rational, orderly life and death are the best that can be
hoped for under her influence, with hope being the operative
term.
And we are living in the era
of her influence now, today – Kali Yuga – the Age of
Kali. This is the last of four Ages in Hindu cosmology, and the most
decadent, an age in which human beings have forgotten almost all of the
sacred admonitions of God, and have become so deeply hypnotized by Maya
(material illusion) that they cannot perceive anything else. It is an
age of pervasive materialism, greed, wonton destruction, and omnipresent
ignorance. In the absence of higher knowledge, humans are the constant
victims of their physical drives and appetites. And behind the many
layers of emotional turmoil present in this period, lies the obsessive
fear of carnal destruction and the enveloping chaos presumed to follow.
This is the final age in Hindu belief, to be followed eventually
by the emergence of a new Golden Age in which people will have direct
knowledge of, and communication with, God. But, before that Golden Age
appears, Kali will run rampant as she performs her primary spiritual
task – the absolute and utter assault on the ego on every possible level
everywhere. This is what is symbolized by the belt of severed heads.
Why is this necessary? Why
must we pass through Kali Yuga at all? Because our animal consciousness,
which was not so obstructive in the first (Golden) Age, progressively
becomes more pervasive as the succeeding ages appear. In a word, we
mentally deteriorate as a species! What appears to the ego as evolution,
is, in reality, devolution! At the final stage of the process,
human beings have become little more than sophisticated animals – and we
have Kali Yuga. The Soul must pass through this final stage of material
decline as the required last step in Its spiritual evolution through the
four Yugas. Presumably, It has become a durable enough entity to weather
Kali’s storms by the onset of Her Yuga, but many of us required to
endure this most trying period of spiritual development might claim
otherwise!
How are we to respond to the
spiritual challenge of Kali Yuga? The fundamental concept involved is
that of self-perception. If we see ourselves as defined by the ego and
its construction of “reality”, we are definitely in for a very rough
time. The ego becomes a ferocious master in the absence of other
balancing influences in the Psyche. The ego can never be satisfied for
long with any amount of material gratification – it always wants
more – this is in its very nature as a psychological construct. Although
it loves to present itself as a problem solver, the real truth is that
the ego has a problem creator built right in! More to the point,
the ego’s primary function of mediating the flow of information from the
senses to gratify the body’s physical impulses tends to obstruct the
perception of any and all other realizations about life, holding thought
down on the animal level – producing sophisticated animals, but little
more. In retrospect, Kali represents the perfect entity to
achieve ego destruction – an insane, arbitrary machine expressing purely
chaotic destruction that can neither be predicted nor avoided.
In the face of such an
entity, such a condition of living, we must ponder what mode of
life is ultimately worthwhile, and this, in fact, is the necessary first
step for those who would do more than blindly follow the ego into
oblivion. We must refuse to look away from the truth of the Kali mythos,
and subsequently acknowledge the ultimate reality of this life – that we
emerge into it from apparent chaos, and will return through that chaos
eventually to whatever may follow. With this sobering reflection comes
the empowerment to resist the ego’s limited prospectus for
consciousness, and look beyond it for deeper levels of meaning and
purpose.
Compassion is the obverse
condition of the ego’s obsessive self interest, and it is the capacity
for expressing this quality – relatively selfless concern for
others and their circumstances – that most clearly differentiates human
beings from all other creatures. If we can develop this quality of
consciousness, and then live accordingly, we have taken an enormous step
away from the status of being one of Kali’s helpless victims. This is
why Buddhism so strongly emphasizes the development of this trait as a
primary mode of thinking, acting, and being – it is the key to our
psychological survival in Kali Yuga! Once this essence of the Soul is
understood in that light in our consciousness – as the light of selfless
love – and we further realize that there is no higher purpose in
life than rendering assistance to each other from this perspective, the
ego is functionally eliminated as the dominant influence acting upon
awareness. And that which is no longer dominant does not require Kali’s
attention in so urgent a fashion.
The rest of the work required to live wisely in Kali
Yuga is accomplished through the cultivation of detachment. The
ego loves to become infatuated with – and thereby attached to –
external objects above all other concerns – objects of gratification,
sex objects, love objects, objects of convenience, even objects of
remorse – all are grist for the ego’s obsessive mill. Compassion and
detachment complement each other as mental inoculations against Kali’s
fury. Perhaps the best summative statement that I have ever heard
regarding this relationship is expressed in this statement: “In order to
live as personally fulfilled, mentally healthy individuals, we must
learn to use objects and love people, not love objects and use
people.” To become attached to anything on an object level is to enter
into what must eventually become a very one-sided love
relationship with a condition, one that cannot possibly respond
to us in kind. And beyond this, objects are doomed to the same fate as
everything else in Kali Yuga – disintegration. The wisest and most
prudent course in life is to maintain a spare existence depending on as
few objects as possible, and simultaneously cultivate the most
meaningful, authentic relationships possible with the other human beings
present around us. From my current perspective on living – one that is
the result of a lifetime of suffering and seeking for a higher purpose
in this banal existence – I have found no greater truth.
- With Love, Alan -
(CR2007, Alan Schneider)
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