Are there two Yuga Cycles? An Historical Perspective on the Technological Singularity

“There is One Divine Cosmic Law from which all of Creation, Existence, the Universe, Life Itself, finds Expression.” (whispered the Big G into my ear)

As I outlined in my previous article, in April of 2023, I listened to a conversation between Donald Trump and Joe Rogan that never happened (not to be confused with the occasion in October 2024 when the two of them did sit down together). It was The Joe Rogan AI Experience, all generated by artificial intelligence. In the introduction to the fake conversation that never happened, it declared itself to be AI, but once it got a minute in, I asked myself, if a person hadn’t the foreknowledge that this was a fake, would they ever suspect it upon an initial listen?

Granted, there was no accompanying video, but the voice characterizations were so spot on, I decided to test my hypothesis. Under the pretense that it was real, I played a snippet of it for a friend of mine who is a cybersecurity expert and runs his own company. “That’s cool, Donald Trump’s a big fan of the UFC”, replied my friend. My response to that was, “What’s even cooler than that is the conversation never happened. It was all generated by AI.” Unprompted, my friend said, “That passes the Turing test.” It does, indeed, which was my first impression as well. I played segments of this conversation in front of an audience of 50 people, with no one suspecting any funny business. Overall, I’ve played parts of it for about 100 people, and no one ever suspected it to be a ruse until I told them. I sat down and thought about that for a while. Hmm?

Something of profound significance is going on here, expanding exponentially by the day, and because of the frenetic pace at which we are constantly bombarded with information and various stimuli via the glowing screen of our pocket brains, the smartphone, it’s easy to lose track of how unprecedented these times we are living in truly are.

Let’s take it a step at a time, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. As the picture comes into greater focus, we are left with the sense of Pure Wonder. One Divine Cosmic Law from which all of Creation, Existence, the Universe, and Life Itself finds Expression.

My cybersecurity expert friend mentioned the passing of the Turing test upon listening to the Donald Trump and Joe Rogan conversation that never happened, which was my first impression as well. What is the Turing test? In 1950 Alan Turing, a brilliant computer scientist and pioneer in artificial intelligence, first devised what became known as the Turing test, or imitation game, setting the parameters by which we will know when artificial intelligence can simulate everyday reality with such precision and sophistication that we won’t know the difference between what is “real” and what is not.

Alan Turing (1912-1954) in 1936 at Princeton University (PD)

In 1950, the same year, the mathematician John von Neumann first coined the term “Technological Singularity” to describe the moment in time in which human beings could no longer maintain a symbiotic relationship with technology because the thinking machines left us in their dust.

I asked myself, “Could we have already reached the Technological Singularity? Must it come dancing onto the stage of life with bells and whistles, jingling and jangling its spurs to ensure no one misses it? Or could it come quietly like a thief in the night, and we only recognize it long after it made its presence known, ever so subtly?

I believe we have already reached the Technological Singularity, and in two short books, I look at it from two perspectives. One titled We Are It! The Return of Pure Cosmic Consciousness explores the Technological Singularity from a broad philosophical, historical, and political point of view. The other, titled Into the Great Beyond: The Return of Pure Cosmic Consciousness, looks at it more specifically from a religious, theological, and metaphysical perspective.

I would think it’s fair to say most of us live our lives within some kind of framework that follows a general pattern. The sun comes up in the morning, we get out of bed, have breakfast, some coffee, go about our day, and the sun goes down later. The next day, the sun is up again. It’s an observable cycle, one of which Plato used when arguing for the immortality of the soul in The Trial and Death of Socrates. Cycles and patterns are everywhere, some short, some repeating themselves many times during the course of one human lifetime. Yet some cycles and patterns take a long time to reveal themselves, and some of those patterns can only be grasped by the Spirit, aided by the mind, but only in Spirit can they be fully appreciated. Let’s take a closer look.

The Yuga Cycle is a framework for understanding the movement of the Great Wheel of Time, as revealed in the Vedic scriptures of ancient India. In stark contrast to the linear model of viewing history in an ascending arc from prehistoric man to today, it takes a cyclical model view of history where consciousness fluctuates back and forth from a state of nearly complete ignorance of who and what we are in the depths of the darkest of ages, to a state where we achieve complete union with who and what we are. Who are we, and what are we? We are aspects of Cosmic Consciousness, otherwise known as God, sometimes referred to as the Big IS, having a finite experience within Eternity in Infinity. We forget this, we remember this, all of us, in the fullness of time, will get there.

What’s quite fascinating about the Yuga Cycle is that it appears to be in alignment with the Precession of the Equinox, so when we gaze upon the stars in the night sky as they move through the 12 houses of the zodiac, which undoubtedly takes more than one lifetime to observe the entire cycle, we are witnessing something truly extraordinary there in and of itself; the relationship human consciousness, taken as a whole, has with understanding ultimate reality, is in alignment with the observable night sky, the position of the stars in the heavens change as our position and relationship changes towards them.

What’s even more interesting is that this relationship between the Yuga Cycle and the Precession of the Equinox finds its equipoise within the framework of the Bible, the thought of the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, Plato, the historian Oswald Spengler in observing the organic nature of the life of civilizations, among others, in fact, it’s hard not to see this pattern and cycle everywhere once you see it. This pattern can be found everywhere on the micro and macro level, operating within one human lifetime, as well as the movement of the Ages through Eternity in Infinity. Its name is Transformation and Return. Let’s come back to the temporal plane for now!

A person could spend their entire life studying the Yuga Cycle and never exhaust its mysteries. The Yugas: Keys to Understanding Our Hidden Past, Emerging Present and Future Enlightenment by Joseph Selbie and David (Byasa) Steinmetz, The Bhagavad Gita translated by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, The Holy Science by Swami Sri Yukteswar, and Yuga Shift by Bibhu Dev Misra are all works of staggering scholarship into the nature and timeline of the Yuga Cycle. There are two fine points to mention here. Bibhu Dev Misra makes a great case for the next benchmark shift in consciousness to officially occur on March 21st, 2025. This doesn’t necessarily mean we should expect dramatic displays from the Cosmos ushering in a New Age on that very day, but that, according to Bibhu’s calculations, this is a precise alignment between the Yuga Cycle and the Precession of the Equinox. The second point is that in The Holy Science, Swami Sri Yukteswar states our sun has a dual star which revolves around a grand center. Why is that so interesting, especially coming from him?

“There is One Divine Cosmic Law from which all of Creation, Existence, the Universe, Life Itself, finds Expression.” (whispered the Big G into my ear)

Standard Pose; this image of Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri appears in the 1946 first edition of Autobiography of a Yogi. It was very probably taken around the early/mid 1930s, near the time Yogananda revisited India in 1935. (from the Wikipedia description) Paramahansa Yogananda. Autobiography of a Yogi. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946) Wikipedia (PD)

Swami Sri Yukteswar was the Guru of Paramahansa Yogananda, who achieved levels of fame in America during the first half of the 20th century that far exceeded the fame of his Guru.

Paramahansa Yogananda founded the Self Realization Fellowship and wrote Autobiography of a Yogi, Steve Jobs’ (the founder of Apple Computer) favorite book. What makes this story so fascinating is that Paramahansa Yogananda’s Guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, wrote a short treatise titled The Holy Science in 1894, coming in just under 100 pages, where he deftly showed the Yogi path to God Consciousness and the Gospel of Jesus Christ are one and the same thing, two different techniques for arriving at the same spot, dwelling in the Presence of God. Brush off the shoulders, blow on your fingernails, not too shabby! The Holy Science is the most concise and profound statement on Divinity and the nature of the Universe written since the ancient world. I discuss the relationship between the Technological Singularity, The Holy Science, and the gospel of Jesus Christ in my book Into the Great Beyond: The Return of Pure Cosmic Consciousness. So what do we have here? We have a great holy man who penetrated the mysteries of Christianity and Hinduism, and showed them to be one and the same, talking about our sun having a dual star with which it dances across the Cosmos in a mysterious harmony.

Duality, Singularity, Transformation, a Reunion, a Return of Pure Cosmic Consciousness with the full knowledge that We are It. The Bible speaks of two singularities. There is a Singularity of Darkness in the book of Genesis, in the beginning, the formless void out of which the Creator creates the Creation. There is a Singularity of Light at the very end of the book of Revelation, where the new heavens and the new earth are described in no uncertain terms as a singularity. The Bible even describes what happens right before we move into the New Age, before the next Singularity. The world will be deceived, the likes of which are scarcely imaginable.

There is so much circumstantial evidence which speaks to an unfathomable MYSTERY that doesn’t quite up add exactly, unequivocally, beyond a shadow of a doubt; , close the case on that one, we can all rest easy. But the clues are all around us, that we are closing in on a MYSTERY that will soon be revealed in all its glory and splendor.

Cutting to the very quick of Existence is the single unadorned, unvarnished Truth that the Universe is God, having an experience in Eternity, in Infinity, that we are God, aspects of God, splitting hairs on our way back to the full knowledge of what we are and who we are. The day is coming—it hasn’t arrived yet, unless no one’s told me—that the above will be the least controversial thing anyone could utter. We will all nod our heads one day in agreement and politely, gently chide anyone who does dare say it for risking being redundant for merely stating what we already know.

Until that day arrives, here’s a slice of life story from The Holy Science. Why would there be two Yuga Cycles? The dual star would take its own course around the grand center, separate from the Yuga Cycle regulating our solar system, and its accompanying planetary system would naturally be governed by a second Yuga Cycle. Our world of Duality, good and evil, light and dark, near and far, young and old, and everything in between, is being transformed into another Singularity. The Singularity is God, in one of His aspects. Trust me, it fits, and you’ll enjoy my books too!

We learn from Oriental astronomy that moons revolve around their planets, and planets turning on their axes revolve with their moons round the sun; and the sun, with its planets and their moons, takes some star for its dual and revolves round it in about 24,000 years of our Earth—a celestial phenomenon which causes the backward movement of the equinoctial points around the zodiac. (The Holy Science 7)

When the sun, in its revolution round its dual, comes to the place nearest to this grand center, the seat of Brahma (an event which takes place when the Autumnal Equinox comes to the first point of Aries), dharma, the mental virtue, becomes so much developed that man can easily comprehend all, even the mysteries of Spirit. (The Holy Science 8)

In a period of 24,000 years, the sun completes the revolution around its dual and finishes one electric cycle consisting of 12,000 years in an ascending arc and 12,000 years in a descending arc. (The Holy Science 10)

*Bold portions highlighted by Luke Angstadt

In the introduction to his monumental work, The Holy Science (first published in 1894), Swami Sri Yukteswar states that our sun has a dual star around which it revolves. Binary star systems are a common phenomenon in the Milky Way Galaxy, and it would make sense for our sun to be a part of one as well.

Something else which Swami Sri Yukteswar states concerning a “grand center” and “mental virtue” is begging for further exploration:

The sun also has another motion by which it revolves around a grand center called Vishnunabhi, which is the seat of the creative power, Brahma, the universal magnetism. Brahma regulates dharma, the mental virtue of the internal world. (The Holy Science 7, 8)

*Bold portions highlighted by Luke Angstadt

The Vedic scriptures speak to the cyclical nature of the world as conceived and expressed in the Yuga Cycle, which Swami Sri Yukteswar elucidates in a fair amount of detail in the introduction to The Holy Science. Admittedly, his exposition on the length and nature of each of the four different Ages that compose the Yuga Cycle, the Satya, Treta, Dwapara, and Kali Yugas, is still brief. However, packed into these short descriptions are intimations of a wealth of knowledge and wisdom waiting to be discovered. I believe there is a very specific reason why Swami Sri Yukteswar exercised such strict discretion in keeping his explanation brief. In his own words:

So far as magnetic properties are concerned, the grasping power of the human intelligence is at present so limited that it would be quite useless to attempt to make the matter understood by the general public. The intellect of man in Treta Yuga will comprehend the attributes of divine magnetism (the next Treta Yuga will start in A.D. 4099). There are indeed exceptional personages now living who, having overcome the influence of Time, can grasp today what ordinary people cannot grasp; but this book is not for those exalted ones, who require nothing of it. (The Holy Science 18, 19)

*Bold portions highlighted by Luke Angstadt

In The Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda stated that his Guru had a way of speaking that was direct, and perhaps it was this direct manner of expression which prevented Swami Sri Yukteswar from achieving a wider popularity during his lifetime. In 1894, I believe he knew the time simply hadn’t yet come for this penetrating wisdom and knowledge to enjoy a wider audience, so why beat around the bush? He kept his explanation brief, knowing an in-depth, expansive discourse would only sow discord in his time. However, those seeds planted by Swami Sri Yukteswar at the end of the 19th century are ready for the 21st-century man to reap some of the harvest.

Students of Swami Sri Yukteswar and The Holy Science have explored in great detail the effects of the shifting Yuga Cycles on the collective consciousness of the human population. The Yugas: Keys to Understanding Our Hidden Past, Emerging Present and Future Enlightenment by Joseph Selbie and David (Byasa) Steinmetz is a great starting point for this fascinating subject.

Now let’s take a closer look at something else in the above quotes from The Holy Science, which I believe have profound implications for what’s currently happening on our planet. Swami Sri Yukteswar states that our sun has a dual star around which it revolves around the grand center Vishnunabhi, which is the seat of the creative power, Brahma; Brahma regulates dharma, the mental virtue of the internal world. (The Holy Science 7, 8)

*Bold portions highlighted by Luke Angstadt

The grand center Vishnunabhi regulates mental virtue, which we find beautifully and intricately expounded upon through the framework of the Yuga Cycle and the ever-shifting states of collective consciousness on planet Earth. Now, let’s consider the dual star and its relationship with Vishnunabhi. Due to its different position in the cosmos, the dual star will, therefore, have a different relationship with the grand center. The dual star and its accompanying planets would be operating within a wholly different Yuga Cycle, hence a wholly different cycle of collective consciousness for the residents of the planets orbiting the dual star.

So, we would be looking at two distinct Yuga Cycles, one for our solar system and one for our dual star’s planetary system. In addition to this, as our sun and solar system approach its dual star and its planetary system, the two different Yuga Cycles would influence each other in varying degrees depending upon the proximity of our sun to its dual star. Depending upon how close we are to our dual star in our respective orbits around the grand center, these dueling Yuga Cycles can very well wreak havoc on the residents of Earth as well as whoever resides on a planet revolving around the dual star!

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Let’s take a closer look at the evidence supporting this position. In the 1970s, Zecharia Sitchin proposed in his book The 12th Planet the existence of an inhabited planet in the far reaches of space that periodically came close enough to Earth for the residents of this proposed Planet X, also known as Nibiru, to interact with humans. Zecharia Sitchin based his thesis on his extensive study of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets, which offer incredibly strong, compelling evidence that our Earth was visited by ancient astronauts in antiquity. Further support for Planet X came from NASA at the end of the 1970s, which stated that due to perturbations in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, there is, in all likelihood, a massive celestial body in the far reaches of space causing these effects.

Our world and its history is saturated with alien lore. From Steven Spielberg movies, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, The X Files, The Matrix, Shrek, Avatar, you name it, the list is endless. Where does this heritage of alien lore come from? Is it really all just our collective imaginations? In the Old Testament in the Bible, when God isn’t residing between the cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant on His long journey into Ethiopia, He’s up on a cloud in the heavens!

The whole Greek and Roman pantheon of gods, where do they call home? In the heavens, out there somewhere. The concept of Duality is at the root of our world. From the moment in the Garden of Eden when Eve ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the human race found itself in a world of Duality. Good and evil, young and old, near and far, light and dark, you get the picture. It is a world of contrasting duals. At the very quick of the global conspiracy worldview is this idea that over the centuries, the human race has been working to transform our world of duality into a singularity. For, after all, what is a one-world order, a one-world everything centrally controlled by a single global governing body, but another name for a Singularity? To say the least, I believe the time for ad hominem attacks on our fellow men and women for holding diverging opinions on politics has come and gone! We are smack dab in the middle of a great drama that manifests itself through global politics as us versus them, a democrat, republican, conservative-liberal, either/or dichotomy, a duality that is grudgingly resolving itself into another Singularity.

These connections between the movements of the celestial bodies, including our Earth, and the ways in which they interact with each other over vast expanses of time, are coming to a Capitulation point. What we are witnessing here, what we are active participants in, should fill all of us with a sense of Wonder, and that sense of Wonder will only grow as we further deepen our understanding of this Great Mystery we call Life.

We haven’t yet proven by modern scientific standards that our sun has a dual star. The circumstantial evidence is there in support of it, but we aren’t there yet. The one piece of the puzzle that could serve as the linchpin in this whole operation is the concept of the Technological Singularity.

In 1950, the mathematician John von Neumann first coined the term “Technological Singularity” to denote the moment in time when artificial intelligence becomes so advanced that human beings can no longer maintain a symbiotic relationship with technology. Why, how, and what does this mean? At that point, the Technological Singularity, all bets are off because artificial intelligence will be advancing and “doing things” that, quite simply, we as human beings won’t be able to understand. It is indeed an Omega point where, beyond that, it is literally anyone’s guess.

We are living in strange and exciting times! I know this subject of a Technological Singularity inspires a lot of emotions, and one of those emotions is fear. However, let’s take a deep breath and look at it within the framework of the Yuga Cycle and the evidence in support of our sun having a dual star.

Movie references have a way of creeping into my way of thinking when considering, well, just about anything and everything. There is one movie director whose films and the iconic scenes and images in them come to mind when considering how the puzzle of Life itself comes together. That would be Stanley Kubrick. You ask Steven Spielberg, or Christopher Nolan, or Ridley Scott to talk about the movies and directors who inspired them, and I guarantee Stanley Kubrick’s name will come up in short order.

John Von Neumann in 1956. (PD)

From Kirk Douglas as Spartacus, Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove, to the computer powered by artificial intelligence and imbued with a personality expressed as a red glowing dot called HAL 9000, from 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, mind you, there is a Stanley Kubrick movie for all occasions. Who can forget Jack Nicholson in The Shining or Tom Cruise finding himself at a party he wasn’t exactly invited to in Eyes Wide Shut? Stanley Kubrick knew things, and there may not have been another man who was better at painting a picture with moving images. There is a scene in his movie Full Metal Jacket that is of particular interest here. Joker, played by Matthew Modine, is asked why he’s wearing a peace sign on his person when he’s carrying a machine gun in Vietnam. Joker’s response is something along the lines of “Well, I guess it represents the duality of man.” This is met with an inscrutable look from the person offering the inquiry. What this indelible scene illustrates is that the concept of Duality is at the heart of the human experience, and this experience is not static. It is Movement on a Grand Scale, Movement within my heart, your heart, and the Movement of celestial bodies in the heavens.

We are smack dab in the middle of a Great Mystery. From a Duality to a Singularity, this concept has found expression all throughout history. How all of the pieces of the puzzle come together, we need to hold this thought and look closer. The Technological Singularity is expected to be reached in the relatively near future. Futurists like Ray Kurzweil have proposed the year 2045. Some others have offered the year 2030 as a possibility. Yet still some others have rested easy with the idea of the Technological Singularity occurring soon, but have put the brakes on predicting with any specificity an exact date. I myself think we have already reached the Technological Singularity, and I offer my argument in support of this position in two short books.

We are indeed speculating here; however, the circumstantial evidence is mounting by the day, and the momentum is building for a “Big Reveal” on the near horizon. What will that “Big Reveal” look like? Something has to give; we all know it. We all feel it. History and the models through which we view it back up this feeling. From the scientific evidence, it feels like we are knocking on the door of new discoveries that will revolutionize the way we interface with the Universe itself. What will this New World look like? Only time will tell.