I Read this extremely well written article the other day and just had to share it with you! It is the work of Henk van Straten, an award-winning writer from the Netherlands.
As I learned only recently, we’re living in the Age of Kali, also known as the Dark Age or the Age of Immorality. Hinduism describes a cycle of four ages, in which Kali Yuga is the fourth and last. It’s an age of decline, which ends when the world – all reality – is destroyed by the god Shiva. Then everything starts over again, brought to life by the god Brahma. But in fact, Brahma and Shiva are one. When Brahma turns his back on you, you see Shiva’s face. Creation always involves destruction.
In this sense, it’s all a game. And it’s often been described that way, for instance by British philosopher Alan Watts. Brahma is playing a game with himself, experiencing himself through the eyes and ears of all living things. Yet despite his love of hide-and-seek, he is fundamentally one. That means we too – you and I – are Brahma. We are his enjoyment.
Through us, he experiences suffering, and love, and sex, and hunger, and pleasure, and excitement. Then, when he starts to get bored, his Shiva manifestation sweeps everything off the table, and the game starts over again.
I don’t know why, exactly, but I find this myth comforting. It puts everything in a more playful light: our personal suffering, but also the suffering of the world and the time in which we live. Even Donald Trump is a game that Brahma is playing. The god is using him too as a plaything, like a child with a carnival mask.
At the same time, Brahma is not the creator in the same sense as the Christian god. There is no separation between Brahma the god and the humans that he created. We are the god, we are Brahma. He (or she, of course) is a god with countless arms and eyes, and they’re our arms and eyes.
That means we don’t have to bow down to some higher power, something mightier than we are. Unless you’d like to bow to the Great All, the Unknowable, the cosmic energy that you are. Are, not have. There’s nothing occult about that. It’s consistent with the science of quantum mechanics.
Of course, the idea that we live at the end of times is timeless. It always feels as if we’re in the Kali Yuga. So don’t take that too seriously either. Or go ahead and take it seriously if you like, it doesn’t matter. Either way, Brahma will be equally delighted.