And now again reënter into the Golden Egg of his Thought the germs of all that exist, as the divine Manu tells us. During His peaceful rest, the animated beings, endowed with the principles of action, cease their functions, and all feeling [Manas] becomes dormant. When they are all absorbed in the Supreme Soul, this Soul of all the beings sleeps in complete repose, till the Day when it resumes its form, and awakes again from its primitive darkness.[605]
As the Satya Yuga is always the first in the series of the Four Ages or Yugas, so the Kali ever comes the last. The Kali Yuga now reigns supreme in India, and it seems to coincide with that of the Western Age. Anyhow, it is curious to see how prophetic in almost all things was the writer of Vishnu Purâna, when foretelling to Maitreya some of the dark influences and sins of this Kali Yuga. For after saying that the “barbarians” will be masters of the banks of the Indus, of Chandrabhâgâ and Kâshmîra, he adds:
There will be contemporary monarchs, reigning over the earth, kings of churlish spirit, violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness. They will inflict death on women, children, and cows; they will seize upon the property of their subjects [or, according to another reading, be intent upon the wives of others]; they will be of limited power ... their lives will be short, their desires insatiable.... People of various countries intermingling with them will follow their example; and, the barbarians being powerful [in India] in the patronage of the princes, whilst pure tribes are neglected, the people will perish [or, as the Commentator has it: “the Mlechchhas will be in the centre, and the Âryas in the end”].[606]Wealth and piety will decrease day by day, until the world will be wholly depraved.... Property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification.... External types will be the only distinction of the several orders of life; dishonesty [anyâya] will be the (universal) means of subsistence; weakness the cause of dependence; menace and presumption will be substituted for learning; liberality will be devotion; a man if rich will be reputed pure; mutual assent will be marriage; fine clothes will be dignity.... He who is the strongest will reign ... the people, unable to bear the heavy burthens [khara-bhâra, load of taxes], will take refuge among the valleys.... Thus, in the Kali Age, will decay constantly proceed, until the human race approaches its annihilation [pralaya]. When ... the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that divine Being which exists, of its own spiritual nature [Kalkî Avatâra] ... shall descend upon Earth, ... endowed with the eight superhuman faculties.... He will reëstablish righteousness upon earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of Kali Yuga shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal. The [pg 405]men who are, thus, changed ... shall be as the seeds of human beings, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita Age (or Age of Purity). As it is said: “When the Sun and Moon and (the Lunar Asterism) Tishya, and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion, the Krita [or Satya] Age shall return....”[607]
Two persons, Devâpi, of the race of Kuru, and Maru [Moru], of the family of Ikshvâku, ... continue alive throughout the Four Ages, residing at ... Kalâpa.[608] They will return hither, in the beginning of the Krita Age[609] ... Maru [Moru][610] the son of Shîghra, through the power of devotion (Yoga) is still living ... and will be the restorer of the Kshattriya race of the Solar Dynasty.[611]
Whether right or wrong with regard to the latter prophecy, the “blessings” of Kali Yuga are well described, and fit in admirably even with that which one sees and hears in Europe and other civilized and Christian lands in the full XIXth, and at the dawn of the XXth century of our great “Era of Enlightenment.”
Section VIII. The Lotus, as a Universal Symbol.
There are no ancient symbols without a deep and philosophical meaning attached to them, their importance and significance increasing with their antiquity. Such is the Lotus. It is the flower sacred to Nature and her Gods, and represents the Abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive powers of both Spiritual and Physical Nature. It was held as sacred from the remotest antiquity by the Âryan Hindûs, the Egyptians, and by the Buddhists after them. It was revered in China and Japan, and adopted as a Christian emblem by the Greek and Latin Churches, who made of it a messenger, as do now the Christians, who have replaced it with the water-lily.
In the Christian religion, in every picture of the Annunciation, Gabriel, the Archangel, appears to the Virgin Mary, holding in his hand a spray of water-lilies. This spray, typifying Fire and Water, or the idea of creation and generation, symbolizes precisely the same idea as the Lotus, in the hand of the Bodhisattva who announces to Mahâ-Mâyâ, Gautama's mother, the birth of Buddha, the world's Saviour. Thus also, were Osiris and Horus constantly represented by the Egyptians in association with the Lotus-flower, both being Sun-Gods or Gods of Fire; just as the Holy Ghost is still typified by “tongues of fire,” in the Acts.
It had, and still has, its mystic meaning, which is identical in every nation on earth. We refer the reader to Sir William Jones.[612] With the Hindûs, the Lotus is the emblem of the productive power of Nature, through the agency of Fire and Water, or Spirit and Matter. “O Thou [pg 407] Eternal! I see Brahm, the Creator, enthroned in thee above the Lotus!” says a verse in the Bhagavad Gîtâ. And Sir W. Jones shows, as already noted in the Stanzas, that the seeds of the Lotus, even before they germinate, contain perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what they will become one day, as perfected plants. The Lotus, in India, is the symbol of prolific Earth and, what is more, of Mount Meru. The four Angels or Genii of the four quarters of Heaven, the Mahârâjahs of the Stanzas, stand each on a Lotus. The Lotus is the two-fold type of the Divine and Human Hermaphrodite, being so to say, of dual sex.