We have now dealt with the slow progress of the last Dark Age, Kali Yuga of the Ascending Arc, which ended at the close of the 17th century (1698 AD). A consideration of the next Age, marked out by the gradual rise of the Autumnal Equinox on the zodiacal circle, brings us to our modern era, Dwapara Yuga or the Bronze Age of the Ascending Arc, which will complete its 2400 year period in 4098 AD.

Our present year, 1933 AD, is the 235th year of Dwapara Yuga, and world progress has made greater strides in those two and one-third centuries than in all the twenty-four centuries (comprising two Kali Yugas) that preceded the modern Age of Bronze. Man's intelligence has become attuned to the subtler vibrations of the new Age; knowledge pours in like a flood; discoveries and inventions have transformed the world as if by miracle or magic.

As previously mentioned, each of the four Yugas, as described by the ancient Hindu sages, has a correspondence with one of the four powers of Maya, the darkness of Illusion that hides from man his Divine nature. Each Yuga brings to mankind in general an opportunity to control and understand one of these universal powers. The four Illusions, Abidyas, of Maya, counting from the grossest to the most subtle, are:

In Kali Yuga, the knowledge and power of man is confined to the world of gross matter (Bhu Loka, first sphere), and his state or natural caste is Sudra, a menial or dependent of Nature. During this Yuga, his mind is centered on the problems of material objectivity, the Abidya of Atomic Form. In Dwapara Yuga, man gains a comprehension of the electrical attributes, the finer forces and more subtle matters of creation. He now understands that all matter, atomic form, is in the last analysis nothing but expressions of energy, vibratory force, electrical attributes. During the course of this Age of Dwapara, man is given the power to annihilate the Abidya, Illusion, of Space, and the second limitation of Maya is thereby conquered."

Has time not proved the worth of these classifications of the ancient Hindus? Has not history substantiated the accuracy of the time-periods allotted by those inspired rishis to the various World Ages as these are marked out within the 24,000 year cycle of Equinoctial Precession? Are we not now indeed in Dwapara Yuga, as testified to by the extent with which we have

We are no longer the Sudra dependents of Nature, nor does the institution of human slavery any longer flourish among us. Its passing had to await the coming of the mechanical and industrial revolutions which ushered in our present Age. By 1833, slavery had been abolished in all French and English colonies. Emperor Alexander II freed 23,000,000 serfs in Russia in 1861. Two years later, President Lincoln banished slavery from the New World. "If the shuttle would weave of itself," Aristotle wrote as an apology for slavery, "there would be no need of slaves." The use of machinery, with steam, compressed air and gases, and electricity as motors, has released human muscle from cruel drudgery. Simultaneously, as the physical body of man became unimportant as a source of power, the value of his mind, of his function as a thinking and reasoning individual capable of understanding and controlling machinery, increased and will continue to increase with the complexities of the Machine Age. Education of the masses has spread farther and deeper in the last two hundred years than in the previous two thousand.

Dwapara Yuga has been the story of man's growing power over structural materials, particularly important in the case of iron and its derivative steel. Thus have we literally triumphed over the Iron Age of Kali. "Today in the electric furnace one may see tons of incandescent steel swirling about like boiling milk in a saucepan. Nothing in the previous practical advances of mankind is comparable in its consequences to the complete mastery over enormous masses of steel and iron and over their texture and quality which man has now achieved. The railways and early engines of all sorts were the mere first triumphs of the new metallurgical methods. Presently came ships of iron and steel, vast bridges, and a new way of building with steel upon a gigantic scale. . . . In the old house or ship, matter was dominant—the material and its needs had to be slavishly obeyed; in the new, matter has been captured, changed, coerced. . . . It is in this great and growing mastery over substances, over different sorts of glass, over rocks and plasters and the like, over colors and textures, that the main triumphs of the mechanical revolution have thus far been achieved. . . . Concurrently with this extension of mechanical possibilities the new science of electricity grew up. . . . Suddenly came electric light and electric traction; and the transmutation of forces, the possibility of sending power, that could be changed into mechanical motion or light or heat as one chose, along a copper wire, as water is sent through a pipe, began to come through to the ideas of ordinary people. . . . By 1909 the airoplane was available for human locomotion. There had seemed to be a pause in the increase of human speed with the perfection of railways and automobile road traction, but with the flying machine came fresh reductions in the effective distance between one point of the earth's surface and another. . . . The science of agriculture and agricultural chemistry made quite parallel advances during the 19th century. Men learned so to fertilize the soil as to produce quadruple and quintuple the crops gotten from the same area in the 17th century. There was a still more extraordinary advance in medical science; the average duration of life rose, the daily efficiency increased, the waste of life through ill-health diminished. Now here altogether we have such a change in human life as to constitute a fresh phase of history."

We have not as yet traversed one-tenth of the Ascending Bronze Age. What modern science has already accomplished, then, is less than one-tenth of what it will accomplish by 4098 AD Professor Soddy, speaking of radio-activity, said, "It sounds incredible, but nevertheless it is true, that science up to the close of the 19th century had no suspicion even of the existence of the original sources of natural energy. . . . The vista which has been opened up by these new discoveries admittedly is without parallel in the whole history of science."

Only very recently have scientists succeeded in the transmutation of elements and in the splitting of the atom. "Professor E. O. Lawrence, head of the University of California radiation laboratories," writes Harry M. Nelson, "states that when man has finally learned how to harness the power that is unleashed when an atom is smashed, he will have at his command a tremendous force, a giant that will revolutionize all present means of transportation, heat, light—perhaps our very existence. . . . Although knowledge of the atom is confined mostly to its outer structure, recent experiments which resulted in the disintegration of the core or nucleus of the lithium atom literally open a new world to science. And judging from progress made in other branches of science as a result of experiments of a similar magnitude, it is within the realm of probabilities that the future will see an advance in the life of man such as was little dreamed of in past ages." In short, the practical use of atomic energy will render obsolete all present forms of power. "Cosmic rays," says Professor August Piccard, "may be the energy of the future, harnessed energy which will light cities, motivate industries and drive airplanes through the stratosphere at tremendous speed."

As for man's present knowledge of electricity, he knows only that it exhibits, in motion, magnetic, thermal and chemical effects. He understands little of its true nature and nothing of its source, which is Chittwa, the seat of universal magnetism, and which will not be fully known until the next Age, the Silver or Treta Yuga. Though scientists from the days of Benjamin Franklin have observed that electricity appears in two ways, positive and negative, they do not properly understand its third or neutralizing manifestation. That the ancient Hindus were not mistaken in their electrical classifications is proved by the fact that it is known today that thermions or electrons emitted by a heated substance, may show an electric charge, either positive or negative, or may be uncharged (neutralized).

Further, modern scientists do not understand that there are five different kinds of electricities, each with three modes of manifestation. These are Pancha-Tattwa, the five root-causes of creation. The five electrical energies have their correspondence, in man's body, in his five different sensory nerve impulses, which are purely electrical in nature. A vast world of new interest, new research and new discoveries awaits those scientists who will study and demonstrate the grand eternal truths of universal creation laid bare so many ages ago by the ancient Hindu rishis. Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland offers recent confirmation of very old ideas by his statement that "The human brain is governed solely by electricity, and is composed of a complex generation and distribution of power systems. It consists of no less than four quadrillion of individual dynamos, with the adrenal gland acting as the power house."

It will be of interest here to point out the applicability of the term "Bronze Age" to our present electrical era. Bronze is an alloy of metals, chiefly copper, and it is on copper, due to its excellent conductivity and rust-resisting properties, that the electrical industry rests. Iron, ruled by Saturn, the heavy planet of limitations, was the most important metal during the two Iron Ages which preceded our present epoch. Silver and gold will doubtless be the peculiarly distinctive metals of the future Silver and Golden Ages.

Copper and bronze are under the rulership of the cooperative planet Venus, and during the centuries of the Bronze Age that lie still before us, we may reasonably expect to see the practical realization of the ideal of the Brotherhood of Man. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be" (John 3:2). The Silver and Golden Ages will be ruled, respectively, by the two luminaries, the Moon and Sun.

The power offered to the men of Dwapara Yuga, that of conquering the second Maya Illusion, of Space, has already manifested itself powerfully in the opening years of our Age, chiefly through radio-activity. We can send a radio message completely around the world in less than one-seventh of a second. To a less perfect degree, space has been mastered through the telephone, telegraph, ocean cable, television and by the airplane. Thus far, only two of the five kinds of electricities, corresponding to sight and sound, have been developed. Three more remain for the future, when we may reach across the world to touch beloved friends and to smell and taste objects in their rooms.

The seeming limitations of space have already, in other ways, been overcome through the invention of the spectroscope. Astronomers now understand the structure and chemical composition of all the planets of our solar system and of the fixed stars, and can determine the extent and direction of motion of the solar systems beyond our own. The identity of the composition of the earth with that of the universe, the single origin, similar properties and interdependence of all the worlds of creation, have been established. Spectrum analysis has also brought to light the presence of many hitherto unsuspected elements, and science now claims the existence of ninety-two elements as the basis of cosmic creation. In the field of electro-chemistry, man has succeeded in bridging the gulf formerly supposed to exist between organic and inorganic substances; carbon, the keystone of organic compounds has been made, under electric furnace heat, to combine directly with the metals.

Other inventions of Dwapara Yuga have served the three-fold purpose of the Electrical Age; through the use of the microscope, telescope, photography and the X-Ray, man has extended the realm of his observations from the finite to the infinite, and has gained knowledge of worlds which are, respectively, otherwise too small, too remote, too transient or too dense for his sensory perception.