Shambhavi riffs with an intimate group of students about the nature of the ages or yugas. She talks about the yugas as marking differing capacities to recognize or perceive the divine nature of all. Following this discussion, Shambhavi talks about the necessity of agreeing to receive grace and about the inner recognition that must precede the experience of grace. A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi
Podcast First Words
Shambhavi: We don’t know if we’re going to the Satya Yuga or the Dwapara Yuga next. Anandamayi Ma says that the cycle is from Kali Yuga to Satya Yuga.
Student: Doesn’t that require everything to be destroyed, though?
Shambhavi: Yes, it does. Well, there would be a lot of destruction, but there would never be a time when everything would be destroyed. That’s because creation is part of the nature of reality. So there’s never any pure destruction or pure creation. Those things are always happening together.
Student: Is it easier to reach Ma in the Satya Yuga?
Shambhavi: Yes, exactly. So in each era, the thing that most characterizes it is how easy it is to perceive the divine. The Dwapara is a little easier, the Treta is easier, and the Satya is the easiest.
Student: Would you even need a teacher in an embodied form, since the perception of the divine is so easy? Would there be less need for avatars if the average person’s senses were more subtle and more able to tune in to the divine?
Shambhavi: One of the most profound and wonderful things about waking up is we do all these things to try to realize, but we actually don’t have much idea of what realization is like. So at every moment when we’re doing our sadhana, we’re kind of stepping off into the unknown. So the Satya Yuga represents a time when there’s more realized beings around. More people would know what that was like. From our vantage point, it’s hard to know.
Student: So there might be more teachers.
Shambhavi: There might be more different manifestations of the divine that we’re able to perceive. It’s unclear whether the Dwapara Yuga is an age when it’s just easier to perceive those beings, or when there’s actually more of them. I think probably the former. That it’s just easier to perceive.
