Kali

Wisdom Teachings | Sublime Beings
Kali Yuga, the Dark Age
Book: Parikshit - The World Disciple
Book: Man Sacrifice

Today, when two, three persons come together, everyone would like to give his opinions and push through his views. This way disagreements come about which quickly create differences and conflicts. Dislikes, critical remarks and judgements about others easily lead to distancing oneself and excluding others. The arising problems exist only on the physical, emotional and mental levels. There are no such disagreements beyond the mental level. It is one of the qualities of our time that people can easily get divided if we do not strive for tolerance and are not focused on what unites us. This separative energy is a characteristic of our time which is also called the Dark Age or the Kali Yuga. It corresponds to the night and the new moon.

Kali means darkness, blackness. Kali brings the individualisation of man. When we do not recollect the connection with the oceanic consciousness, we feel ‘I AM’, and under the influence of Kali we are in the illusion that we have a separate existence. We speak and act without connecting to THAT I AM. The personality springs forth and engulfs, so-to-say, the soul and its light.

In the early stages of development, humanity was guided by nature and its forces. With time the individual identity developed and it makes us feel that we are separated from the rest. From separateness selfishness, rebellion, disobedience and passion come about. In Kali Yuga humanity is in the state of an adolescent that does not accept guidance. The humans oppose against nature and collectively commit sins against nature.

We have to distinguish between the Kali Yuga and the Kali nature. The Kali Yuga belongs to the measures of time, the Yugas and Maha Yugas. The Kali nature, however, is a quality of the human mind which exists at all times but increasingly comes to the fore in the Kali Yuga. Even Avatars do not eliminate the Kali nature and yet they show a way to liberation. In an initiate this nature does not sprout even if it continues to exist as a seed. Master EK compares it with a skeleton hidden under flesh and blood. Life according to the divine Law is like flesh and blood; they contribute to the expression of beauty and smile. The skeleton has no such power. An initiate follows the law and does not negate the material world, for matter is no sin. It is required for the spirit to express. Thus, he lives with the right balance between spirit and matter.

Besides the Kali nature and Kali as a unit of time there are also embodiments of the quality of Kali, like Kamsa, the maternal uncle of Krishna, who tried to kill him at birth, or Duryodhana, the eldest of the 100 sons of darkness and the main adversary of the sons of Light. In the scriptures Kali is also described as a figure who meets the King Parikshit and asks him for a place in his kingdom since his age has begun.

Kali (pronounces Káli) is not the same as the goddess Kāli, a form of Durga, the World Mother. She is the veil of truth, the illusion which enables the activity of creation. Like Kali, the Mother Kāli is also worshipped especially during the dark time like the new moon. She is represented with an outstretched tongue which sucks off all impurities. When there is too much evil, she also kills with the tongue. It is interesting to note that one of the seven kinds of tongues of fire which might appear during the fire ritual is black. This dark tongue of fire is called Kāli, that is ‘the black one’ or Krishna, the darkness of the background. In India, the worship of Kāli as Mother and Krishna as Father is considered as the highest form of worship. When the Mother is in the Father, it is called the universal consciousness. When the Father rests in the Mother, in the densest state of the material plane, the spirit is hidden in matter.

Through the senses we connect with the outer world to make experiences there. However, the senses also bind us to objectivity and make us forget the inner. The first senses which awaken in a newborn are the touch through the mother and the taste through the tongue while drinking the milk. Out of all the senses, touch and taste work the strongest. Through food and speech as well as through sex they powerfully draw us out with power.

Kali is depicted with one hand on his mouth and another on his genitals. This posture gives us the message: with these two I conquer you all. Via the touch like hugging and kissing we take in many qualities. Sex binds us much more strongly. It is very difficult for us to gain a right relation to food, speech and sex. The suppression of speech creates a great inner tension, for inwardly the words keep on flowing in mental form. By suppressing the sex instinct in the name of religion great suffering has been created. Suppression as well as uninhibited enjoyment of sex have a disastrous effect on the human relations and the society. Under the influence of Kali priests jealously propagated the concept that sex is sin, while surreptitiously they were engaged sexually in a much more immoral way. But also the sexualisation of our society is an influence of Kali. The Masters do not speak out in favour of sexual abstinence, since it belongs to nature; its energy, however, should also not be stimulated uninhibited but be regulated.

In the age of Kali religions have sprouted which have deviated from the cosmic laws; they manipulate the Law according to their ideas and mislead the people. In this time, it is very easy to promote wrong views, but truth does not die; only its expression gets obscured. Untruth can become very powerful, its effect, however, is limited whereas truth is eternal. The teachings of wisdom surface again through purity of consciousness. The languages also degenerate through the influence of Kali from the height of classical languages to popular languages and further decay to slang. Knowledge cannot be expressed in these languages. To arrest the degeneration of languages is an act of white magic.

Another great quality of Kali is that a man who possesses more money is considered as more virtuous. The rich people shape the law in their favour and enforce rules on others to increase their wealth.

At the beginning of the Kali Yuga King Parikshit granted Kali places for his work: places of violence against man and animal, of gold and money activities, gambling and amusement halls, prostitution, alcohol and drugs. These are the most profitable centres in the business world. Globally, there is a big commerce with weapons, drugs and sex and related with it corruption, violence and murder. World-wide, products are also brought to market which are unhealthy but cater to the baser desires of man.

It is not easy for the governments to think in terms of light or to act for the welfare of the people. And for the people it is not easy to work for things which they actually should work for. In Kali Yuga we also cannot say, this is right, that is wrong, because everything is mixed-up with each other. Krishna explained that there is no use of fighting against Kali or of killing the physical vehicles to redeem the souls; the tendencies towards evil keep on being registered in the mind and the seeds will sprout in future births.

Already before the birth of Krishna the then world teacher Parasara foresaw the Kali Yuga. He realised that in future the human understanding would get obscured by mere intelligence and the imperfections of the rational thinking, and he decided to translate the wisdom keys from the oral tradition to the form of written books. He gave out 18 cosmic formulae in the form of the Vishnu Purana. His son Vedavyasa developed the formulae into 17 further books and composed numerous other wisdom books. One of the Puranas, the Bhavishya Purana, deals with the future. There he speaks about what will happen during the Kali Yuga. He also mentions that an initiate by the name of Esha, whose original name was Isha, would conquer the world with his love. The birth and the work of Jesus 2000 years later were described already there.

At the beginning of the Kali Yuga the Masters and their advanced disciples like Maitreya, Maru and Devapi were worried and they asked Lord Krishna about a method so as not to get under the influence of Kali. He told them, the best way is to live like the cowherds and the gopis of his childhood. Then they understood the method: to feel God’s presence in all things and situations of our life: “I propose to venerate my Presence with the power of the music of the soul. This is the path for the age.” “Kali cannot touch those who follow Me.”

Before Krishna went away, he established the Hierarchy for the present age. As his last message he said to Maitreya: “Wherever I exist, Kali does not exist. Wherever I do not exist, Kali exists. Thus, keep on spreading the I AM.”

Sources: K.P. Kumar: Parikshit. The World Disciple / notes from seminars. E. Krishnamacharya: Music of the Soul. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India.