SECTION V. THE GOLDEN AGE.
Creation begins with the dawn of the Satya Yuga, which is also called the Golden Age. It is the first part and the longest section of the Divine Age. The span of this age is 4,800 Divine years, which being multiplied by 360 gives us 1,728,000 human years. It is the most spiritual age, because, of the three Cardinal Attributes—Sattwa, Rāja and Tama—which govern, and are the parents of, the composing principles of the Universe, the Sattwa is predominant in its influence. The Sattwa is that attribute which uncovers the true state of things without and within us and in Nature, hence it may be called the attribute of Illumination. Rāja is the attribute of Activity (motion of change), and Tama is the very reverse attribute of Sattwa. It is that attribute within us and Nature which covers the true State of things, hence it may be called the Obscuring, darkening attribute, the Attribute of Darkness.
The Satya Yuga is called the Golden Age, because gold is very abundant in this age of utmost spirituality, and gold is the purest and most spiritual of all metals. The Illumination of predominant Sattwa pervades all Nature in this age. Nature, inside and out, is full of light, almost transparent with light—spiritual through and through. So is man, her best product. Men and women in this age attain a spiritual depth and height which no other age can develop. This spiritual height manifests itself In their physical body, while the depth of their inward spirituality shows itself in their outer life and actions. The Gulden Age men are twenty-one cubits, or thirty-one and a half feet, in height. This may strike us, diminutive mortals of this Kali Yuga or Iron Age, as absurd or improbable, but it need not do so if we remember how long ago the last Golden Age was—nearly three million years. Moreover, as they are all of the same height, they do not think they are abnormally tall.
These men and women, owing to their high degree of spirituality, have a perfectly healthy, harmonious and beautiful body, for spirituality is health, harmony and beauty. They have their inner vision fully opened and see more through their ensouled mind's eyes than through their physical ones. They, therefore, see through Nature as through a glass. All Nature stands revealed to them to her inmost depth wherein they see the One Essence which pervades it, the One Spirit of which all things within and on the surface of Nature are but different phases of its manifestation. And in it all they find themselves as part of the same phases, living, moving and having their being sustained by that One Spirit which is both life and light—the One Omnipresent Spirit, the one All-Pervading Essence—Love.
The Golden Age men and women have no garments to cover their entirely bare body, nor do they need any. We clothe our bodies for two reasons:' First, out of our sense of delicacy and shame because of our dark thoughts born of improper and unnatural (sinful) actions, and secondly, to protect our body and health from the attacks of the sun, the rain and the changes of weather and climate. The Golden Age men have no such reason for wearing any clothes. Their perfect spirituality admits of no dark thought to touch their mind, for all is illumination within and without them, while their actions are all in perfect consonance with the purest laws of Nature, in rhythmic motion with the music of the Infinite whose song they hear in their soul. They may be called moving Vedas—walking wisdom and spirituality. The laws of the Veda form the mechanism of their mind, and it is these Vedic laws that move their limbs and prompt their words and actions. Their perfect spiritual health is proof against the hardships of weather, or rather there is no hardship of weather at all. The spirit of the Age pervades all Nature, of which the weather a phase. Even Nature's forces are in perfect harmony with one another, for harmony is the very keynote of the Age. It is Spring, sweetest Spring season, all the year round, during night and during day; warm enough without heat, cool enough without being cold, breezy enough without being windy—man and beast and bird and tree and earth and weather all are in harmony. Harmony, harmony, all is harmony in this Blessed Age.
Man and woman have no need at all for sex life in the Golden Age. The ecstasy of the soul with which their body and being are filled renders it impossible for even any thought of gross fleshly pleasures to enter their mind. The very drawing of breath is to them a pure delight which any fleshly or objective pleasure of our day cannot dream of approaching. Life is lived then in its veriest depth—deep down through the mind, deeper down through the heart, deepest down in the depth of the soul. And when life is lived in such depth, its surface is not heeded or cared for. Such a life does not require much material nutrition—it is nourished by the souls all-nourishing nectar.
These men and women eat very little food—fruits and roots only, and drink milk and water, and these between long intervals. They feel very little hunger and that little on far-between occasions. We feel hungry because of our mind contemplating matter. All matter is changeful—matter is nothing but collected forms of change. Its seeming substance embodies but motion of change, so that its inmost attribute is changefulness. Our mind concentrating on material objects absorbs its attribute—changefulness—and is affected by it forthwith; it becomes changeful in its turn, that is, it is rendered restless, flitting quickly from one object to another. This changefulness of the mind is in turn absorbed by our body, which suffers from its effects in the shape of loss of tissue. And this loss of tissue we have to supply by food and drink and rest and sleep. The Golden Age people do not suffer from this loss of tissue, because their minds are always concentrated on the One Changeless Substance, the very reflection of which through the changeful forms of matter makes them seem steady and substantial. The little wear and tear they suffer from, owing to looking now and then on the surface of things, causes some little need of nutrition, which their occasional fruit and milk meals supply.
If they need little food they also need little rest. And when they need it, they just lie down on the cool carpet of the fragrant grass, for they have no other bed than this, because in the Golden Age there are no houses whatever on the face of the earth. We build houses for the same reasons that we wear clothes, and these reasons are absent in the lives of the Golden Age people. Their bodies need no protection from the weather, nor do they need external comforts, for they think more of their soul than of their body.
Their home is wherever they live and rest, its roof is the high vault of Heaven with its azure canopy, Mother Earth the floor, the trees its walls; Nature's bowers are their boudoirs. All created beings are their family, the whole earth their country. And the whole earth is one large, beautiful garden, the richest and most beautiful garden of flowers and fruits and songbirds. But more beautiful than the garden are the divine men and women who sanctify its soil by their walking, at whose approach near them the trees worship them with showers of flowers and offers of their fruits as love-gifts.
This is the long-forgotten, and now misunderstood, misinterpreted Earth-Garden of the Golden Age called in the Old Testament the Garden of Eden. They are all now trying to locate it, some people in Syria, others in Egypt, others elsewhere, ignorant of the fact that the Garden of Eden was located upon the whole earth. The word "Eden" even is the corruption of the Sanscrit word "ādhān" (Home). The whole earth becomes this "Adhān"—the Home of all humanity, of mortal souls, the Pleasure-Garden for angels on earth to roam about and sport in. This Garden is the physical manifestation of a higher plane, created as the abiding place of mortal man in temporary state of spiritual perfection. They live a perfectly natural life, feeling themselves as parts of Nature, breathing in unison with the breath of sky and air and tree and grass and beast and bird, their souls in tune with the souls of gods and angels and Infinity Itself.
Among themselves they feel a Oneness which only the most sublimated souls, who have realized their at oneness with the all-pervading Spirit, can feel. All humanity feels as one man, and the only distinction they find in this Oneness is in the little difference in the formation of the male and female bodies, although this outward perception of this external difference in some details of the physical structure does not influence the feeling of unity within. Still the difference creates this much distinction that the women and men sec and feel that they are the complements of each other and the difference in bodily structure expresses this fact. All men feel all women are as one and all women feel all men are as one, so that, such is the feeling of unity which pervades the Golden Age people of the earth that all men and women of that age can be called as One Man and One Woman. This is the state of the human society indicated by the story of Adam and Eve. Adam is the typical man and Eve the typical woman of the Golden Age. Even the names bear testimony to this fact. The word Adam is a corruption of the Sanscrit word "Adim" which means primeval, so that Adam means primeval man. The word Eve likewise is a corruption of the Sanskrit word "Hevā" or primeval woman. "Hevā" means life and love—mother of creation. From Mother Nature all things evolve, through the mother all things come to life, therefore is mother "life." The life of all things is motherhood—Life and Love combined is Mother. Mother! It is the music of the spheres—Life and Love—the grandest sound, the music of the Creator, one grand chord in the Music of the Universe. Love and Life—O Blessed sound, the Lord's Own Music—sweet, profound!
The spiritual beauty of these primeval people—the Adams and Eves—shows itself in their physical forms. Their physical forms, symmetry and expressions are ideally beautiful; these fashion and shine forth the spirit of harmony which dwells within them. It may be in truth said of them that they are made in the Image of God, and the truth of this statement grows upon us when we remember that they live and feel that they live in the Essence of Love—live and breathe and have their being moved spontaneously by the Spirit which is the inmost life and force of all Existence.
This is living on the Tree of Life and eating the fruit thereof mentioned metaphorically in the Old Testament. Love, Universal Love, unmixed, Absolute Love is the only Life. When we lose sight of this Ideal, this substance of life, we fall. So long as our minds are filled from within with this Love, this Radiance of God, and we think, move and act by its influence and promptings, so long do we really live the Life which is our real heritage from God. The Golden Age people live this life moved by the Spirit within them, the Spirit-Life that makes life an ecstasy unto itself. This Life of Joy Absolute is illumined by its own Light by the aid of which they sec all Nature as through a transparent glass, they see everything with the ensouled mind's eye— not by the physical eye—for they live within that ensouled mind and rarely come out to the surface called the physical plane. When they do, they feel as if the experiences of that physical plane are, as it were, the experiences of a dream, while the experiences of the ensouled mind they feel as the Reality, the only Reality.
I have already said that the three Cardinal Attributes, (Sattwa, Rāja and Tama) Illumination, Activity and Darkness, are the joint parents of the Principles which compose all creation. When the forces of these Attributes fall into equilibrium, the dissolution of the universe takes place and the equalized Attributes merge into one another and become transformed into a substance quite different from their own. That substance is called Shuddha Sattwa—Pure Illumination. In Sattwa there is a mixture of some Rāja and Tama; in Rāja there is a mixture of some Sattwa and Tama: similarly, in Tama, there is some mixture of Sattwa and Rāja. In Shuddha Sattwa, the Sattwa is free from the other two attributes. Krishna (Absolute Love) is Purest Sattwa. The equalizing of the forces of the Attributes transforms them into Pure Illumination no doubt, but the transformation is temporary. Krishna (Absolute Love) is Permanent Purest Illumination. But even the temporary attainment, by the Attributes, of the Shuddha Sattwa state makes them for the time being the same substance as this First Principle and brings about their absorption into it as long as they keep in that state. This is almost exactly as the germ of a tree remains merged in and becomes part and parcel of the kernel of its seed. And as when the seed is put into the soil, the action of germination separates from that kernel the germ which then grows into a tree, so when in time the forces of the merged Attributes fall out of equilibrium by Rāja (Activity) asserting itself, they get separated and manifest themselves into the Universe. At first the activity of Rāja is feeble and Sattwa predominates. Out of predominant Sattwa springs the Mind, Rāja brings forth the Ten Senses and Tama the Five Essences and the Five Gross Forms of matter. And all objects and animals and men and gods and earth and heaven are but different degrees of blendings of the Three Attributes.
The Satya Yuga (Golden Age) at the beginning of creation is so full of Sattwa (Illumination) that all Nature is made of materials almost transparent as ether. The matter of this first Golden Age is so fine that it would be invisible to the eye of our gross flesh of this distant Kali (Iron Age). Even in the last Golden Age, Nature was made up of such fine matter that it would look, to our gross vision of this day, as pictures of light.
Why is Nature in the Golden Age so ethereal? Because the Attribute of Illumination is predominant in that cycle. All is Illumination, within and without. Through this illumination the Golden Age people see the Steady, Changeless substance which is the Life and Light of which the outer universe is but the shadow. And with the spirit of this Changeless Love and Life and Light in One before their mind's vision, they cannot but feel that its distorted, changeful manifestations called objects are made of fabrics of which dreams are made of. Even they themselves are etheric and irridescent, not visible to the physical eye of the Dark Age, but always visible to the inner eye of men of any age—to the eye of the highly evolved man whose sight is more spiritual than physical. Ether is cognized through etheric vibrations—light alone recognizes light.
For the First Quarter of the Satya Yuga or Golden Age (One Thousand Divine Years) this perfect state of Universal Holiness prevails on earth and among mankind. This is the original of the recorded vision said to have been seen by St. John the Divine as embodied in Chapters 20, 21 and 22 of his Revelations. This is the Millennium spoken of in the Holy Bible when Satan (Sin—Tama—Darkness), it is said, will be bound and cast into a bottomless pit, shut up and set a seal upon, and holiness will become triumphant throughout the world. This means the predominance of Sattwa (Illumination) in man and Nature and Tama (darkness) will be drowned under it. The people will live on the fruits of the Tree of Life—in the Essence of Love. They will live face to face with God, that is, in perfect realization of His Spirit—Love. This Millennium will begin with the First Quarter of the coming Satya Yuga (Golden Age), the New Divine cycle which will be ushered in after the expiration of the Kali Yuga (also called Iron or Dark Age) we are now living in. That time is far away yet, how far I shall in a succeeding Section attempt to indicate.
As already suggested, the Golden Age conditions of Nature are the physical manifestation of a higher sphere. According to the Hindoo Scriptures there are Seven Spheres (Lokas) or Heavens. People in the West speak of the Seventh Heaven. Few know where the expression has come from, fewer that it has come from the Hindoos who believe in the Seven Heavens. The first is the Earth. (Bhur) which is counted as a heaven because heavenly joys can be tasted on the earth plane. Above the Earth is the Bhuba Sphere, the Second Heaven. Above Bhuba is Swar the Third; above Swar is Mahar the Fourth; above Mahar is Jana the Fifth; above Jana is Tapa the Sixth, and above Tapa is the Satya Loka (Seventh). The Golden Age state of the earth is but a reflection of this Satya Sphere on it's Sattwa (Transparently Illuminated) surface. The men and women are angels on earth meet and have communications with gods and angels; and at times even Brahmā, the Shiva, the Destroyer, and Vishnoo the preserver, come down on earth and hold converse with these perfectly pure human beings. Earth then is "Heaven Below," and it is hard to tell, when men mingle with the gods and angels when the latter come down to meet them, which are the gods and angels and which are the men.
Saint John's Revelation 21 in the Holy Bible attempts to give some glimpse of this picture of the Golden Age:
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
"2. And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
"3. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
"4. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."
What St. John describes as "a new heaven and a new earth" is the illuminated heaven and earth—illuminated by Sattwa, which destroys the darkness (Tama) of the preceding Kali (Iron) Age which pervades Nature during its sway. The "holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven," is the reflection of the Satya Loka (the Heaven of Truth), which comes down as it were and mirrors itself on earth. The Golden Age earth is really a bride adorned for her husband, God, for, in the Hindoo Scriptures, Earth has been called the Bride of Vishnoo (God). The meaning of the third verse can be more easily understood as it speaks of the spiritual condition of the Golden Age I have described already.
The fourth verse supports the fact of the unbroken peace and happiness which dwells on earth during the Golden Age. Men know no sorrow, nor crying, nor pain. They are happy and are ever filled with joy. "And there shall be no more death"—this is very important testimony to the one statement in the Hindoo Scriptures about the Golden Age men and women which is more apt to be discredited than any other. In them it is said that in the Golden Age men and women can live for one hundred thousand years and die at will, which is corroborated by St. John, who says, "and there shall be no more death." Life in the Golden Age, say the Hindoo Books, is sustained by the marrow of the bones; man lives as long as there is marrow in his bones. Death and disease are caused by accumulation of sin, which is the result of improper, unnatural living, living, that is, in violation of Nature's spiritual laws. The Golden Age men live in absolute harmony with these laws, and are therefore liable neither to death nor to disease. Men are filled, in this age, "in full measure of virtue" and sin has no place in it, not a trace of it anywhere.
This is the state of Nature and human society which is reproduced in the beginning and first quarter of every Golden Age, which forms the first largest section of every Divine Cycle. This is real Universal Brotherhood, the union of soul to soul being brought about by the general recognition of the One Spirit which is the root, sustenance and life of all manifestations in Nature. Spirit only makes man brotherly, and the feeling of the One and the Same spirit is the source of true brotherhood, and until One Love is for all, souls shall be separated and countries will war with countries. Every one in the Golden Age looks upon every one else as himself, as it were. It is more than Ideal Brotherhood in this state of society; it is real, practical, spontaneous brotherhood, brought about by the Attribute of Illumination having full play within all created matter, objects and beings. They are united from within, not through outside forces, and so close and natural is the union that they do not realize that it is anything unusual at all, even in the deep demonstrations of spontaneous love which they feel for one another.
If such is the high state of perfection which men attain in the Golden Age, the animal and the vegetable kingdoms also share the benefit of the predominance of illumination in Nature, of which men and animals and vegetation are but different phases of manifestations. We have read in the so-called fables and fairy-books of a time in which animals were wont to speak, and as in our day they do not speak at all, we regard such statements and stories as myths. But they are not myths, however absurd they may strike us, viewed from our practical experiences of animals in our Kali Age life. If the animals of this Kali (Dark) Age cannot speak, that is no reason why animals of an enlightened age should not be able to speak. But this is what forms the chief difficulty in the way of our believing in such stories. We have been hypnotized by our conceit into believing that ours is the most enlightened age and that we are far ahead in enlightenment and advancement of intellect of our remote ancestors of, what we complacently term, the "primitive" ages, meaning thereby ages in which men were either savages or half-savages. If this were true, the animals of those ages could be imagined as worse in habits, powers and instincts than those of our "advanced" age. Alas, however, it is not true! Our remotest ancestors, whom we, in our dense ignorance of facts of that remote past, love to call savages, were such giants in intellect, spirituality and moral force that our average best spiritual, intellectual and moral men cannot be compared with them. We are indeed fast losing our moral depth which was the sheet-anchor of their character. Why? Because our minds are getting more and more dense than those of even the near past, not to speak of those of the remote ages. Why? Because Nature herself is getting denser and denser every day with the growing influence of Tama (Darkness) which is the ruling attribute of this Iron Age. We are the products of Nature—we all, men and beasts and trees and grass. Our density is to be traced to our parent—Dame Nature. This growing density which pervades our minds is daily making us less spiritual and intellectual than our forefathers. No wonder it has affected the body and senses of animals as well.
Illuminated Nature illuminates animals as well in the Satya Yuga. Animals then have more intelligence, better perception and keener instincts than now, and share the love-spirit of which all earth is full. They talk like man, although not in the same clear and sweet voice as man. They roam about with men and love one another as men do. There are no domestic animals in this part of the Golden Age, for man has no home or house. There are no wild animals, for all animals are tame, tamed by the spirit of harmony within and without them. The cow roams about free, giving milk to whoever will drink it out of her udder.
The trees in the Satya Yuga are large and tall in proportion to the height of men, which is 21 cubits. They are overladen with sweetest and juiciest fruits. All kinds of corn grow wild and abundantly without any tending or cultivation. The whole earth is a natural garden, orchard and granary for all created beings to enjoy and draw sustenance from when needed. Here I quote a poem written under inspiration after seeing a trance-vision of the Golden Age, by one of my students, Miss Rose R. Anthon:
Palpitating with love, Like a mother's breast, As she views her babe
As it sinks to rest.
In the citied hive.
Unfolded to me.
The heart did meet.
The skies did ring!
Of haunting woe!
With the lion bold.
Suckled one breast.
Like outspread wings.
The perfumed air.
'Neath feet the dew.
The moon did view.
By sin's hot hand.
Disturbed the mind.
Entered one fold.
Filched beauty's grace.
Was panting sigh.
Had Hope entoned.