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Originally Posted by Myth and Religion: the edited transcripts
The Hindus, for their period of history, had extremely vast ideas of space and time. They had the theory that the hiding part of the universal game goes on for 4,320,000 years; a period called kalpa in Sanskrit. The "dreaming" part is followed by the "waking" part. The dreaming is the hiding where the Godhead imagines that it is all of us. Then for another 4,320,000 years there is a period of awakening, and at the end of that begins the dream again. The dreaming period is further subdivided into four stages. The first stage is the longest, and is the best. During that stage, the dream is beautiful. The second stage is not quite so long, and is a little unsettling. There is an element of instabilitiy in it, a certain touch of insecurity. In the third stage, which is shorter still, the forces of light and the forces of darnkess - or good and evil - are equally balanced, and things are beginning to look rather dangerous. In the fourth stage, the shortest of them all, the negative, dark, or evil side triumphs, and the whole thing blows up in the end. But that is like the bang in a dream when you get shot, and wake up, and see it was just a dream after all. There is a waking period, and then the whole thing starts again.
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