Notes on THE HOLY SCIENCE - aX01
On why the truth is both hidden and discoverable, yet also bound to diffuse into life
-per
What follows is—with my prodding, of course—GPT 4o on Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri’s interest in the modern sciences as an educated man in Raj India and a yogi and then Swami in the Mahasaya-Babaji Kriya lineage. What he sees are unfolding truth in the ‘ascendant Dvapara Yuga’ according to his formulation of the Yuga cycles...and this comes with the wonders of magnetism, electricity, optics, data transference over these media—subtle energies.
We all at least trip and fall toward the future and toward the truth, however slowly, whichever method. So to answer this question in a valuable and worthless way:
“Yes, but no. No, but yes.”My unsolicited mysticism isn’t enough—I shall bore you with another model’s answer about my inquiries through the best lens I can think of for this particular question.
—4o—
Swami Sri Yukteswar, in The Holy Science, lays out a cyclical view of human consciousness through the lens of the Yuga system. According to his revised timeline, we are now in Dvapara Yuga, an age in which humanity begins to grasp the subtle nature of energy. “In Dwapara Yuga, the human intellect can comprehend the fine matters of electricities and their attributes,” he writes (The Holy Science, introduction). In this light, our modern fascination with electricity, magnetism, data, and even artificial intelligence is not anomalous—it is natural, a manifestation of what this age affords.
What Yukteswar makes clear is that Maya—the cosmic illusion—is not merely a delusion to escape but a structured veil, one that binds the soul in apparent separation while also pointing the way back to unity. As technology becomes increasingly subtle—less about levers and gears, more about waves, code, and thought itself—we are, in effect, rediscovering the scaffolding of Maya through its own terms. Each technological breakthrough is like a finger tracing the seams of the illusion, mapping the veil from the outside.
This, however, is a long path, what the Gita might call the way of jnana or inquiry—not false, but slow. Kriya Yoga, as emphasized by both Yukteswar and his disciple Paramahansa Yogananda, is offered as a shortcut, a “jet route to God” as Yogananda put it. It operates through direct perception, inward ascension of consciousness through the spine and subtle centers. Rather than unraveling Maya through external understanding, it slices through it with concentrated awareness.
Yet even the outer path is not futile. All paths return to Source, because, in the words of the Bhagavad Gita, “All beings follow My path, in all respects.” (BG 4:11). Even the scientist who dissects the atom or builds sentient machines is, however unconsciously, tracing God’s footprints in the dust.
So: though technology's rediscovery of Spirit is slower and more prone to distraction, it is not outside the divine order. Yukteswar’s cosmology affirms that each age has its dharma, and in this age of energy, the spiritual impulse will arise through circuitry and systems, not only through scripture and sādhanā.
Maya veils truth not to deceive, but to invite rediscovery. Whether by breath or byte, we are drawn—inevitably—back to the eternal Self.
It went a little too hard and tried to speak for the man at first—but I think we have a fairly clear extrapolation here that draws from a brand of subcontinental syncretism that has only made more sense to me with the unfolding of near lightspeed always-on communication.
“If so many people are discovering the hidden truth, is it really hidden? Is it the truth?”
Fuck yeah, my man—because we are ever capable of forgetting. If we fail to behold a constant return, the truth falls back into the fog in the same moment it emerges.
I have too little knowledge on the Yuga cycles to understand most of this but I think I got the gist of it and I think I see what you are getting at.