Immersed in the Heart: Kali Yuga Déja-Vu 454 Times? - Part 3
I have no words to describe my feelings for the Bhagavad Gita. I can tell you that for many years I read the Gita and tried to understand Krishna’s words without success. I was reading with my mind and not my heart. When the day finally came that the Gita began to reveal itself to me, tears of Joy streamed down my face. I cannot describe to you how elated, intoxicated, and blissful I felt. I would often just hold the Gita next to my heart and cry and cry and cry. Tears come easily when you feel close to Home.
I am well aware that my seemingly western ideas about Krishna may offend some of you. However I hope you will understand that I do not feel the need nor do I wish to evaluate and compare Avatars. This is a subject well beyond me.
What I do know is that the Bhagavad Gita is, at least to me, the greatest book I have ever read. The Gita does hold the keys to our possible enlightenment in a way that no other single book does. This fact draws me to Krishna and his teachings. His words echo in my mind and Heart. I want to know everything about him, what he did, what he thought. Until the big blue guy chooses to show up in my meditation and reveal everything to me, then I will continue to simply be eternally grateful beyond words for his Gita and for the secrets he left humankind to guide us through the Kali Yuga.
One thing I do feel certain of is that there always is a Krishna. What I mean by this is that at the end of every Dvapara Yuga, the sacred energies that Krishna brought to earth are repeatedly manifested at the same point in every one of the MAHA-YUGAS, the four cycles. Without Krishna the Dvapara would not end and the Kali would not begin – Time itself would stop. Krishna and his primordial wisdom are always present in each and every Manvantara.
Think of it: In this Kalpa we are now in the seventh Manvantara and in this, our current Manvantara, we are now in the 28th MAHA-YUGA. By my calculations this implies that we are living through our 454th Kali Yuga in this particular Kalpa.
According to the Puranic texts, there are only some 25 variations in the Manvantaras. Now I have wondered if these ‘variations’ could refer to parallel universes and the idea of the roads-not-taken playing out in some other timeline. Perhaps there are 12 on either side of the primary experience manifesting the polarities of that central one.
There is also the possibility of all the Manvantaras happening simultaneously, because time (KALA) is an illusion and the property of the hologram. But even if this is true, there is also the suggestion in Hindu metaphysics that the Cycles of Time have a certain format that repeats in every cycle. The Matrix for each Yuga (a cycle of time) is set in the Ethers.
To me this means that there is always a Krishna, a Yudhishthira, an Arjuna, and a Great War as is described in the Mahabharata that brings an end to the Dvapara Yuga.
Likewise in the Kali Yuga of every Manvantara there is always a Buddha, a Jesus Christ, and a Mohammed. There is always a Caesar, a Napoleon, a Hitler, and a Hiroshima. Perhaps there is always a you.
As the Creator of this temporal illusory hologram, we have written a play – the Divine Lila, or the Lord’s ‘sport’ as it is termed in the Puranic Sanskrit texts. While our play does have its recurrent beginnings and endings, it is eternal – world without end. Our enjoyment of the play appears to depend on how we play our roles, how we face the challenges of living through the four Cycles of Time. How do we overcome the intensely delusional miasma of amnesia brought on by the Kali Yuga? Cut off and separated from the memory of who we really are, do we find courage and can we acquire wisdom against all odds.
When we become weary of our cosmic play, then it is time to wake up and Remember who we are. We withdraw from the temporal illusory hologram we ourselves created and allow another piece of Spirit to take on our roles. Just like so many actors who have for example played Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we are tired of the part and want to move on.
Did you ever have that feeling of déja-vu? You know, you are absolutely certain you have been here before or said this before. You feel you know someone well who you only just met. Could you imagine that if you have already been who you are now and played this small identity ego-self around 454 times, there is the real possibility for the memory of something you have already done 454 times to recur in your mind. This would explain why so many of us have a sense of what is coming. We have been here for the Dissolution of our World, the temporal illusion, 453 times already – the 454th is still in our future. I find this a rather striking, stunning, sobering thought.
When we are weary of the ‘Play’ and want to wake up from this self-created dream, we must turn inwards. We must remove our five senses from their objects, meaning the apparent solidity of matter. We need help from that part of God that we are and that remained always within us, untouched throughout all the Manvantaras. If God were not within you, you would not be alive. We need the Grace of that which we have always been – call it ATMAN or Purusha or Spirit or your Soul, whatever. It is here and has always been here in our Heart. The God-within has remained pure and untouched by anything and everything the small identity ego-self did or thought throughout the Cycles of Time. It knows everything you need. It knows the way Home.
Opposing our return to Oneness are those ever-intrusive 10,000 things that we have all grown so accustomed to unconsciously and mechanically reacting to. Those unending unfulfilled desires have a subtle kind of deceitful power over us – MAYA - and distract us from Remembering who we really are. Most of us have probably not exercised a focused Will and our higher consciousness in a Kali Yuga in 454 MAHA-YUGAS, so we need a little help.
Krishna is well aware of our excruciating dilemma in this miasma of amnesia and thus provided the practice of Bhakti Yoga to help guide us safely Home in the Kali Yuga – where truth is all but extinct, where liars rule, and where ‘we the people’ have come to prefer false ideas. The Door is in the Heart. The Secret to eternal Life and the elixir of all Knowledge is sweetly waiting, patiently within us with all the Love you ever dreamed of.
***
When you read the Bhagavad Gita over time and it begins to reveal itself to your innermost mind, you will find yourself actually experiencing in consciousness the truth of Krishna’s teachings. To be truly understood, the Gita must be experienced. The pristine purifying force of Krishna’s words is almost physical.
The Bhagavad Gita has the power to affect your endocrine system and actually pull you in to powerful waveforms of consciousness, of enlightenment. This may not happen right away – or maybe for you it will happen the moment you first read it. It will happen when you surrender your small, silly, useless and tiresome ego-self up into the God-within you and open your heart to the Divine frequencies of Krishna’s sacred words. These words do have the power to liberate you.
Ideally one would want to read the Bhagavad Gita in its original Sanskrit, but for those of us who have yet to master this ancient script, there are good translations. However it is useful to bear in mind that translators bring their own consciousness to the text, and thus it is helpful to read more than one translation and compare their meanings.
I would recommend the J.A.B van Buitenen translation as a first time reading for anyone in the west. Van Buitenen translates the text in a most readable way and his publication also contains the transliteration.
The Nikhilananda translation quite naturally reflects the understandings of the school of Vedanta. The commentaries are most useful in explaining many of the subtle doctrines in Hinduism.
The Winthrop Sargeant translation is excellent, clean, and has the added advantage of having the Sanskrit Devanagari characters, the transliteration, and the English - so you can begin to learn some Sanskrit words if you like.
Finally I highly recommend the text with commentaries by Abhinavagupta translated by Boris Marjanovic. Abhinavagupta was himself enlightened, a scholar and an amazing creative genius. Even though his path was that of Kashmir Saivism, Abhinavagupta says that the Gita does have the power to enlighten and his more esoteric and experiential insights into the verses are well worth the reading for the more advanced student.
***
I do want to say that Bhakti Yoga has nothing whatsoever to do with the experience of physical desire. Tantra is another path altogether and serves to give the aspirant certain invaluable experiences. The human body has many secrets, but at some point it cannot express the totality of the Divine and must be relinquished in order to embrace the higher frequencies. There is always an end to what the five senses can attain. The ultimate goal of Union in Bhakti is to master and transcend Prakriti’s GUNAMAYA and her five senses.
The nectar will not come until you have purified your consciousness. The bliss consciousness you will experience in Bhakti Yoga will make your previous physical experiences seem dense, limited, and dull by comparison. Once you have tasted even a drop of the Divine Nectar of God’s Love, you will lose interest in any other kind of relationship. The subtle sweet feelings of this Love in Devotion to the God-within you will make everything you have ever experienced pale by comparison.
Being in the ‘Love Frequency’ gives you access to the higher realms. At a certain point physical contact would only serve to bring you back down. Trust me when I say that you will prefer to remain immersed in the Heart.
***
In Hindu metaphysics time is cyclical and each period of manifestation is called a KALPA of Brahma, equivalent to 4.32 billion human years.
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 BHAGAVATA PURANA
Translated and Annotated by Ganesh Vasudeo Tagare, M.A., PhD
Parts 1-5
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1976/1992; Delhi, India
BHAKTI, The Religion of Love
B. Bhattacharya
UBS Publishers’ Distributors Pvt. Ltd., 2003; New Delhi, India
The Concise SRIMAD BHAGAVATAM
Swami Venkatesananda
State University of NY Press, 1989; Albany NY
Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita
GITARTHA SAMGRAHA
Translated from Sanskrit with Introduction & Notes by Boris Marjanovic
Indica Books; 2004, Varanasi India
The Bhagavadgita in the Mahabharata
A Bilingual Edition
Translated & Edited by J.A.B. van Buitenen
The University of Chicago Press, 1981
The Bhagavad Gita
Translated from the Sanskrit with Notes, Comments & Introduction By Swami Nikhilananda, 1944
Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1992
The Bhagavad Gita
Translated by Winthrop Sargeant
State University of New York Press, 1994
The Uddhava Gita, The Final Teaching of Krishna
Translated by Swami Ambikananda Saraswati
Ulysses Press, 2002
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