Now then, this works on a little plan. Let us consider the breakdown of a single Kalpa.
 It consists of four Yugas. Yuga, that means an epoch. Number one is called Krita, or sometimes
 Satya. And these names are based on the Hindu game of dice. There are four throws in their
 game, and Krita means the perfect throw, the throw of four. Number two is Treta, the throw
 of three. Number three is Dvapara, the throw of two. And number four is Kali, that's the
 worst throw, the throw of value one. Now, you will see that these Yugas divide up a
 period of 4,320,000 years. I never remember numbers too well. So the first Yuga is 1,780,000
 years long. The second is 1,296,000 years. The third, the Dvapara, is 864,000. And the
 Kali Yuga is 432,000. Now you see what's happening here. When the manifestation starts, it's
 as good as possible. Everything is just glorious, because you know well that if you were dreaming
 anything you wanted to dream, you would start out by having the most luscious dreams imaginable.
 Now when we get, you see, to the Treta Yuga, something is a little bit wrong. Krita is
 four square. Everything's perfect, like the symbol of the square is an ancient symbol
 of perfection. Treta is the triangle. Something's missing. There's a little bit of uncertainty
 and danger now enters. By the time we get to Dvapara, the forces of light and darkness
 are equal, duality, the pair. But when we get to Kali, the force of darkness overcomes.
 But now you see what happens is, if you take one third of the Treta Yuga as being on the
 bad side, half of the Dvapara Yuga as being on the bad side, and all of the Kali Yuga,
 and you add those figures up, you will get the bad side occupying only one third of the
 total time. So what's going on here? It is not quite a situation, you see, it's not a
 view of the cosmos in which good and evil are so evenly balanced that nothing happens.
 Evil is just troublesome enough to give good a run for its money. It's as the game that
 is being played here is playing order against chaos. But you've got to have some chaos in
 order to play the game of order against it. But if order wins, there's no further game.
 If chaos wins, there's no further game. If they're equally balanced, it's a stalemate.
 So what happens is this, order is, chaos is always losing, but is never defeated. It's
 the good loser. And that is a game that is worth the candle. Let's take playing chess.
 If you get an opponent who can always defeat you, you start playing with him. If you get
 an opponent whom you can always defeat, you stop playing with him. But so long as there
 is a certain uncertainty of outcome, and you win some of the time, then it's a good game.
 And this is simply a number symbolism, as I said again, not to be taken literally of
 the way this thing works. So the mythology says that we are now in the Kali Yuga, which
 started a little before 3000 BC. So we've got a long way to go to the end of it if you've
 got to take this literally. But of course, people have a way of always being in the Kali
 Yuga. We can go back to Egyptian inscriptions from 6000 BC, which say is that the world
 is going hopelessly to the dogs. That's always been the complaint. But according to this
 mythology, you have to realise the Lord, the Brahman, in three aspects. One is Brahma,
 the creative principle. Two is Vishnu, the preserving principle. And three is Shiva,
 the destroying principle. And Shiva is very important here. Shiva is always represented
 in Hindu imagery as a yogi. He is the destroyer in the sense of being the liberator, the cracker
 of shells so that chickens can come forth, the break-up of mothers so that their children
 can be unsmothered, the liberative destruction, the bonfire. That's why devotees of Shiva
 like to do their meditations along the banks of the Ganges where they burn dead bodies,
 because through destruction life is constantly renewed. Shiva has a paramour, and her name
 is Kali. But that is a different word than Miss Kali. You mustn't confuse the two. And
 Kali is much worse than Shiva. She is black, and she has a long, long tongue, and her eye
 teeth are like fangs. But she's very beautiful, otherwise. She's a lovely figure, but she's
 black. And in one hand, her right hand, she carries a scimitar, and in her left she carries
 a severed head hanging by the hair. And Kali, who is Shiva's… You see, Shiva is normally
 considered wedded. All the gods have their paramours, and they're all examples of the
 one central self. She's called Parvati, but that's her bright aspect. But her dark aspect
 is Kali. And Kali is the awful awfuls, the thing above all that men most dread. Kali
 is outer darkness. Kali is the end. She may be represented as a blood-sucking octopus,
 as a spider-mother that eats its spouse. And Kali is the principle of total night. And
 yet there are those in India like Sri Ramakrishna, for whom Kali is the supreme mother goddess.
 Because she is two-faced, she is playful and terrifying, loving and devouring, destroyer
 and saviour. And the cult of Kali has its importance, helping one to see the light principle
 in the very depths of darkness. I have some suggestions for meditation on Kali, which
 you can all practice very easily. You go to the aquarium, and you find out there the monsters
 of the deep that make you feel most uncomfortable, and you study them. So in this way, Kali is
 studied by her devotees. And if you meditate on those, this will be like putting manure
 on the soil. And out of all this apparently morbid and dismal thinking, bright things
 will begin to arise, because you will realise that what Kali is, is the most far-out act
 that the Supreme Self can put on, the symbol of complete alienation from itself. So what
 happens you see is this. In the process of the game of hide and seek, the Supreme Self
 tries to see how far out it can get, just like children like to sit around and have
 a competition as to who can make the most hideous face. And so this gets worse and worse
 as the time cycle goes on, until at the end of the Kali Yuga, Shiva puts in an appearance,
 and he's all black and he has ten arms, and he dances a dance called the Tandava. And
 in dancing the Tandava, the whole universe is destroyed in fire. But of course, as Shiva,
 having done this wreckage, turns around to leave the stage, you find that on the back
 of his head is the face of Brahma, the Creator. And it starts again.
 (chewing)


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