Dwapara Yuga: Moon Landings

It was 40 years or two generations ago that man landed on the moon, a stunning underlining of the space-conquering nature of Dwapara Yuga and a hard feat for the traditionalists to explain who believe we're still mired in the pure materialism and ignorance of Kali Yuga.

Much more than a simple technical tour de force, the mission to the moon inspired generations of young people with undreamed of possibilities (although for some that still meant the draft and the Vietnam war). As the Houston mission control photo on the right illustrates, this was accomplished in an era of rotary dial telephones, message tubes and slide rules.

The author later, at age ten, wrote a letter to NASA asking to be an Astronaut and was rewarded with a large pack of color photographs and a letter suggesting to return with a degree in Physics in hand.

Sadly, after the Apollo missions (and parallel although quieter successes of spy satellites that allowed arms treaties to be negotiated), the Space Shuttle was something of a 'space bus' that inspired few (including the author), overshadowed by more captivating VTOL and Stealth airplanes themselves symbolic of the increasing mastery of space and finer energies associated with Dwapara Yuga and notably absent in the period of Kali Yuga (although scripture and artifacts suggest their presence in the previous, falling higher ages).

At KSC today, the Apollo exhibits are magnificent and awe inspiring and the Shuttle with all its problems and delays, simply expensive and dull (flawed from the start with its dual military and civil specifications that fully satisfied neither). Ironically, having begun the space race against Russia, as the Shuttle retires next year, it will be Russia that picks up its mission workloads underlining the hubris of declaring oneself a unique super power but lacking the checkbook to cover it or even teachers' salaries in California, one of the richest places on Earth.

With purely technical and scientific breakthroughs unsatisfying, the accent should equally be on exploring inner space as Rishis did in millenia past, looking beyond the five ordinary senses, Astral and Causal planes to Cosmic Consciousness.