The misread calendar

For centuries, traditional reckoning held that the world was deep in Kali Yuga, the darkest of the four ages. Sri Yukteswar argued that an error had crept into the calculation, and that the descending arc had already bottomed out around 500 CE. Since then, he taught, the world has been ascending — and around 1700 CE it crossed from the dark Kali Yuga into the brighter Dwapara Yuga.

The age of energy

Dwapara is the age in which humanity grasps that matter is energy. Sri Yukteswar predicted, well before modern physics confirmed it, that this age would reveal the fine, electrical and atomic forces underlying creation. The explosion of discovery since the 1700s — electricity, the atom, instantaneous communication — is, in this view, the natural fruit of an age awakening to subtle energy.

Why it matters to the seeker

This is not mere cosmology. Kriya Yoga is itself a science of energy — of prana, the life-force — and Sri Yukteswar taught that the rising age makes humanity newly receptive to exactly this kind of inner work. The same era that uncovered electricity is uncovering the subtle current within the spine. The times are ripe for the science of the soul.

A message of hope

Far from despairing about a fallen world, the Kriya yogi looks on the age with quiet optimism: consciousness is rising, the veil is thinning, and the path to realisation is more open now than it has been for millennia. Read more in The Four Ages and explore the great texts of the path.