Yuga

Osho, the Gita’s view is that the world is a descent from the superior to the inferior. Accordingly, the Hindu notion of the decline from Satya Yuga to Kali Yuga also seems right. But known history tells us that humankind has been moving gradually from human sacrifice, slavery and poverty toward prosperity and freedom. What is the fact in this?

First, when a child is born, he is innocent; his slate is blank. There is nothing bad written on it, and nothing good either. The child is not a saint; he is innocent. Nor is he a sinner. The sinner is not there at all—and the burden of being a saint is not yet upon him. He has not yet said yes or no. He has not yet chosen the bad or the good. He is still without alternatives. He has made no choice. He is choiceless. He does not even know what is good and what is bad. The division has not arisen; the child lives in non-division. This state of the child was once the state of the whole society; this is what the Hindus call Satya Yuga—the age of truth. And it seems right; it even seems scientific. Because the story of one person’s life is the…

Then he also said, “Osho belongs to the Kali Yuga.”

Krishna too was considered God—he carried off sixteen thousand other men’s women. Their children must have suffered, their husbands must have suffered, their families must have been destroyed. And these women did not all come of their own free will; they were seized and abducted. And still Krishna could be considered God! That is only possible in Kali Yuga. How could it be possible in Satya Yuga? And in Krishna’s life there is nothing in which godliness shines forth. Krishna is responsible for the Mahabharata. In the Mahabharata India’s spine was broken, and after that India never rose again. The five thousand years of India’s misfortune—if any one person is most responsible, it is Krishna. If he could be called God, then people’s very notion of God shows what kind of intelligence they had. As I see it, I am an evolutionist, not a declinist. For me, better people came…

Question: First question: Osho, can anyone still realize God in this Kali Yuga? The tyranny of darkness has been so effective— Is the night becoming permanent? So the doubt arises: Has the night become forever? Will there be no dawn? That is what Kali Yuga means—that there will never be a morning again; that this is the final night; that the days of day are gone, now only nights. Listen to people: “Those good old days!” People think backwards. There is a psychological, not historical, reason. Every person has left childhood behind—that is the reason. In childhood there were no worries, no responsibilities, no anxieties. We did not know what was happening in the world. There was light everywhere; flowers were blooming; butterflies flying; clouds in the sky; the reign of fairies. Everyone has left behind days of happiness.

Osho, “Kaliḥ śayāno bhavati, saṃjihānas tu dvāparaḥ; uttiṣṭhan tretā bhavati, kṛtaṃ saṃpadyate caran. Charaiveti. Charaiveti.” “He who is asleep is Kali; the one who sits up from sleep is Dvāpara; the one who stands up is Tretā; but the one who starts walking becomes the Kṛta-yuga, the Sat-yuga, the golden age. Therefore keep moving, keep moving.” Osho, please be gracious and explain the purport of this subhāṣita from the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa.

Not only small people—your very Maryādā Puruṣottam Rāma runs after a golden deer! He loses the real Sītā chasing a fake golden deer. And this is everyone’s story: people lose the real running after the unreal. They chase a golden deer. Even the craziest person can understand there are no golden deer! The world is called a mirage. This very Rāma calls the world dreamlike, māyā, like the mirage that deludes a thirsty deer in the desert when the sun’s rays... There is a way the sun’s rays behave. Falling on bare sand, they heat it; heated sand reflects rays back. Those returning waves from afar look exactly like water rippling. Not only do they seem so, they appear with “proof”—because when the rays return, the ripples look water-like, and the silhouettes of trees nearby appear in those waves like reflections in a lake. Seeing that reflection, the deer becomes…