This article sets the context for the rest of the blog. The biggest challenge to the (general) reader is not the ideas themselves rather (potentially) unfamiliar Eastern names and vocabulary.Yoga is a group of ancient spiritual practices originating in India. Its emphasis is on meditation, although it is best known in the West for the preparatory physical exercises of Hatha Yoga.
Hinduism is a religious tradition that originated in the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as Sanatan Dharma by its practitioners, a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law".
Sanskrit is an Indo-European classical language of the Indian sub-continent, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India
A yogi (Sanskrit, feminine root: yogini) is a term for a male who practices various forms of the path of Yoga.
The Bhagavad Gita ("Song of God") or simply Gita is a Sanskrit text from India of ancient origin, related to both Yoga and Sanatan Dharma. In essence, it has astonishing similarity to the Bible's New Testament, although with a differing 'cast of characters' and themes.
Paramhansa Yogananda is an Indian Yogi who came to the USA in 1920 bringing a message of Sanatan Dharma essentially meditation, healthy lifestyle and exercise complimenting existing Christian, Jewish etc. beliefs with the goal of making each a better practicioner of his own religion. He died in LA in 1952.
In his lifetime, he opened temples of "all religions" and specifically sought not to begin a "religion of Yogananda". In the 1920s and 30s he was the most popular speaker in the US, meeting with the US and Mexican Presidents, the Governor of California and influencing some of the leading thinkers of the time such as Gandhi, Burbank, Edison and Ford.
Yogananda spelled his own name Paramhansa since he was Bengali. In Sanskrit it is spelled Paramahansa.
Kriya Yoga is the specific yoga meditation technique that he espoused. It can be learned from many organizations. Certain will provide it freely and immediately, others require defined donations, travel to specific places and months or years of study of lessons. It is left to the reader to discriminate which approach works for them.
Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya and Sri Yukteswar along with Paramhansa Yogananda are the lineage of teachers from the same 'school', continuing to this day in North American Kriya Yoga Organizations. Collectively they are the Babaji line of teachers.
Yogananda gives the following explanation of the Yugas in his Autobiography
Self Realization Fellowship, sometimes SRF or SRF Inc. in abbreviation, is the original school Paramhansa Yogananda founded in the US. It is based in Southern California.Sri Yukteswar discovered the mathematical application of a 24,000-year equinoctial cycle to our present age.4 The cycle is divided into an Ascending Arc and a Descending Arc, each of 12,000 years. Within each Arc fall four Yugas or Ages, called Kali, Dwapara, Treta, and Satya, corresponding to the Greek ideas of Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Golden Ages.
My guru determined by various calculations that the last Kali Yuga or Iron Age, of the Ascending Arc, started about A.D. 500. The Iron Age, 1200 years in duration, is a span of materialism; it ended about A.D. 1700. That year ushered in Dwapara Yuga, a 2400-year period of electrical and atomic-energy developments, the age of telegraph, radio, airplanes, and other space-annihilators.
The 3600-year period of Treta Yuga will start in A.D. 4100; its age will be marked by common knowledge of telepathic communications and other time-annihilators. During the 4800 years of Satya Yuga, final age in an ascending arc, the intelligence of a man will be completely developed; he will work in harmony with the divine plan.
A descending arc of 12,000 years, starting with a descending Golden Age of 4800 years, then begins5 for the world; man gradually sinks into ignorance. These cycles are the eternal rounds of maya, the contrasts and relativities of the phenomenal universe.6 Man, one by one, escapes from creation's prison of duality as he awakens to consciousness of his inseverable divine unity with the Creator.
Ananda is the largest organization outside of SRF, based in Northern California, although there are many others.
A directory of Yogananda sites can be found on Google.
The specific themes of this blog are the unfolding Age of Dwapara Yuga, Yogananda and his Kriya Yoga.
The two main books that a reader would want to refer to are Yogananda's broad ranging Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) and an earlier, more specific book by Yogananda's teacher - The Holy Science (1894).
Yogananda's student, Tara Mata, wrote a detailed commentary on the Yugas from an astrological perspective in 1933 called Astrological World Cycles.
The author of this blog wrote a commentary on expanding Dwapara Yuga and Yogananda called Dwapara Yuga and Yoganananda: blueprint for a New Age in late 2007.
This blog includes a great deal of unfolding science, echoing a comment from the Autobiography of a Yogi:
"Very strange, very wonderful, seemingly very improbable phenomena may yet appear which, when once established, will not astonish us more than we are now astonished at all that science has taught us during the last century," Charles Robert Richet, Nobel Prizeman in physiology, has declared. "It is assumed that the phenomena which we now accept without surprise, do not excite our astonishment because they are understood. But this is not the case. If they do not surprise us it is not because they are understood, it is because they are familiar; for if that which is not understood ought to surprise us, we should be surprised at everything-the fall of a stone thrown into the air, the acorn which becomes an oak, mercury which expands when it is heated, iron attracted by a magnet, phosphorus which burns when it is rubbed. . . . The science of today is a light matter; the revolutions and evolutions which it will experience in a hundred thousand years will far exceed the most daring anticipations. The truths-those surprising, amazing, unforeseen truths-which our descendants will discover, are even now all around us, staring us in the eyes, so to speak, and yet we do not see them. But it is not enough to say that we do not see them; we do not wish to see them; for as soon as an unexpected and unfamiliar fact appears, we try to fit it into the framework of the commonplaces of acquired knowledge, and we are indignant that anyone should dare to experiment further.Why does the blog exist? Because it is such an interesting area with important spiritual, cultural and historical facets.
The views expressed herein are the personal, non partisan and non profit views of the author and are not intended to reflect the views of any other individual or organization.
Any profits from this blog and the associated books are donated (and will continue to be donated) to the One Laptop Per Child Foundation (laptop.org), which is unconnected with any of the Kriya organizations. The original dwaparayuga.org redirects to dwaparayuga.com since most folks automatically type the .com part.
This blog and books are proof that when communicating the truth, properties, buildings, printing presses, war chests of funds and armies of workers are largely irrelevant since as Jesus remarked "the stones will cry out".
A debt of gratitude is owed to Swami Kriyananda for the exceptional clarity of his writings and to the Babaji line of teachers who made this knowledge available in this New Age. SRF, Ananda and other Kriya Yoga Organizations are sources but this blog is not a 'booster' or 'anti' site/forum.
Srii Yukteswar makes the following statement to Yogananda in Man's Eternal Quest, p114:
Many teachers will tell you to believe; then they put out your eyes of reason and instruct you to follow only their logic. But I want you to keep your eyes of reason open.The author encourages the reader to keep their eyes of reason open not only for every item in this blog but for teachers and organizations, especially those who discourage questions and research, an approach hardly compatible with the life stories of Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda, Kriyananda etc. For this reason, many links are provided, especially to wikipedia for neutrality since certain of the Yoga Organizations perceive themselves as rivals, jealously guarding their versions of truth.
