Kali Yuga

The Kali Yuga (Sanskrit: n., कलियुग kaliyuga "age of Kali"), the last of the four present Yugas, was the dark age, with the beginning of which, which Rudolf Steiner puts for the year 3101 BC, the last remnants of ancient clairvoyance at the end of the ancient Persian period (5067 - 2907 BC) were abruptly extinguished for the vast majority of humanity. The Kaliyuga lasted 5000 years and thus ended in 1899 according to Rudolf Steiner.

„Then, however, came another age, an age in which this familiarity with the spiritual world also ceased, where, as it were, the gates to the spiritual world closed. People's gaze became more and more limited to the outer sensual world and the intellect, which processes the impressions of the senses, so that people could only think about the spiritual world. That is the lowest way of knowing something about the spiritual world. What people now really knew from their own experience was the sensual-physical world. If people wanted to know something about the spiritual world, they had to achieve this by thinking. This is the time when man became the most unspiritual and therefore the most fixed and entrenched in the world of the senses. But this was necessary in order to gradually develop his self-awareness to the highest height. For only through the rough resistance of the outer world could man learn to distinguish himself from the world and to feel himself as a separate being. This latter age is also called Kali Yuga or the dark age.

I expressly note that these terms can also be used for greater epochs, for example, the term Krita Yuga can be used for an even greater period of time. For before that golden age was there which has been described, man was involved with his experience in still higher worlds, therefore one could encompass all these still older times with this name. But if one moderates one's demands, so to speak, if one is still satisfied with that measure of spiritual experience which has been described, then one can divide them in this way, as has now happened. For all such ages one can indicate quite definite periods of time. Now it is true that development proceeds slowly and gradually, but there are limits to which one can say: Before it was mainly this and after it was that life-relationship and consciousness that predominated. So we must reckon that in the sense in which we first spoke of it, Kali Yuga begins about the year 3101 before our calendar. There we see that our souls have appeared on earth in ever new embodiments, in which the human gaze has become more and more closed to the spiritual world and thus more and more confined to the outer world of the senses. There we see that with each new embodiment our souls actually enter into ever new conditions in which new things can always be learned. What we can gain in the Kali Yuga is to consolidate our I-consciousness. This was not possible before, for then one had first to absorb the I into oneself.“ (Lit.:GA 118, p. 21f)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Das Ereignis der Christus-Erscheinung in der ätherischen Welt, GA 118 (1984), ISBN 3-7274-1180-5 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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