00:00The four yugas in the Vedic tradition have been Satyug, Treta, Dwapar and Kali.
00:22Now what do they represent?
00:25Do they represent the passage of time?
00:29Do they represent something historical?
00:34We have been led to believe that way, we believe that time is something external that happens
00:44to us, it's something happening in the clock or in the watch and it's happening in spite
00:56of us or outside of us, we take it as an objective entity.
01:08So this is the mug outside of me and let's say this is a watch, this too is.
01:22So we start thinking of the four yugas in the usual way, we say Satyug was X years long
01:35or X thousand or X million years long and stretched from this date approximately to
01:43this date and then we say next came the next yug and it dated from one particular point
01:51to the next one, almost like months in a calendar.
01:57That's how we look at the concept of yugas.
02:03Let's say we are currently in December, so we like to say that September was Satyug and
02:18then came October, then November and right now it's Kali Yuga running.
02:27That's the way we are accustomed to think.
02:36Something is amiss here, that's not the way Vedanta looks at time, Vedanta just does not
02:44look at time as an external entity.
02:48Vedanta talks only of two, the Atma and the mind.
03:03If there is just Atma and mind, what is this third thing called time?
03:11What is this third thing called time?
03:18Surely this third thing has to be one of the two elements that Vedanta deals in.
03:30Time obviously is not Atma because Atma is changeless and time denotes change.
03:42So time is mind.
03:46So these four yugas, they surely are states of mind.
03:53Surely they are not one particular linear progression as we traditionally believe.
03:59There is something else there.
04:02Are you getting it?
04:06So then what is Satyug?
04:08Satyug is when the mind is totally centered in the self, the truth.
04:26Treta is when the mind is identified with thoughts, Dwapar is the body and Kali Yuga
04:45is Sansar.
04:49So there is indeed a movement here and the movement is progressively away from the center.
04:57When the mind is closest to the center, you call it Satyug and when the mind is farthest
05:06from the center, you call it Satyug.
05:10Which means some of us might be in this moment in Satyug.
05:16You are already living in Satyug.
05:21It's not as if we are condemned to live all our life in Kali Yuga and unfortunately some
05:34of us might be intermittently slipping away to Kali Yuga.
05:41When you are living a truth-centered life, you are living in Satyug.
05:48When you are living a world-centered life, you are living in Kali Yuga.
05:56Getting it?
05:59That's how we are to comprehend it.
06:03These are not spans on the calendar.
06:10These are not expanses in chronology.
06:18These are simply states of mind.
06:21Are you getting it?
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