I suggest this is a real phenomenon. You may say space appears to contract because technology has reduced distance while time seems to rush by because life has become so fast and rapidly changing, and I would not dispute that but I would also maintain that this is more than an impression because of our circumstances. It is actually happening though it cannot be measured because any instruments we have would be subject to the same forces that are bringing it about. And the reason it is happening is that we are deep in the Kali Yuga or End Times when spirit withdraws from the world and matter becomes more dominant. This means the very stuff of our current world, now old and worn, is less resistant to the forces of decay and entropy. Consciousness, too, is affected becoming more constricted.
The idea of there being four ages in a cycle is well established in religious cosmology. Many traditions speak of this. Egyptian, Indian and Greek myths all refer to it, and these are only the best known. The ages can be characterised as Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron, and in every case there is a descent from a high spiritual state of being to a low material one. At the beginning space is vast and time moves extremely slowly. This is why there are the stories of men living for several centuries back in prehistory. It is also why change only comes about after great spans of time. There is no sense of history since the patterns of life just repeat.
But as the ages proceed people's sense of time changes. Everything is cyclical for early man, each new year resembles the one before, but gradually there arises the notion of linear time. The material aspect of the world condenses and the spiritual moves further away from perception. The process gathers pace until, as the end of the whole cycle approaches, the cosmic framework in which we live has reached such a point of degeneration that it becomes unstable.
This world was originally structured on the pattern of the heavens. What that means is that the eternal realities of the higher worlds of being, somewhat like Platonic Forms, were the template on which human life was based. We can see this clearly in the case of ancient Egypt and India but it would apply everywhere to the degree that it could, based on the human consciousness of the period. A principal principle, as one might say, was the idea of a complementary duality which was the source of creation, heaven and earth, spirit and matter and, in biological terms, male and female. In the beginning there is a correct relationship between these two polarities and they function harmoniously and creatively, but towards the end of the cycle, due to the widening gulf between higher and lower states of being, this relationship is disrupted and becomes antagonistic. This leads to both an inversion of the hierarchy and also attempts to flatten any kind of hierarchy, indeed any kind of difference, at all. This is all in line with the rapidly developing predominance of matter over spirit. When the active and receptive poles of being are functioning correctly and according to their proper nature, all is well. But in a decaying environment everything starts to break down, matter seeks to usurp the rights of spirit and the relationship between the two ceases to operate creatively. The end approaches.
Back in the day advocates of New Age theory looked forward to the world entering the Age of Aquarius when people would experience a so-called quantum leap shift of consciousness. They acknowledged there would be earth changes as the old age crumbled but appeared to think they and many others would be around to enter into a glorious New Age once that had occurred without facing death. This was fundamentally to misunderstand the doctrine of the ages. It is not like winter turning to spring and a new year carries on in more or less the same way. The end of an age is an end. A new beginning is precisely that. It is a fresh start, perhaps on a higher turn of the evolutionary spiral but the past is completely cleared away. When a new heaven and a new earth arrive everything that belongs to the old order must die. Perhaps to be reborn if it has oriented itself correctly, but still it must first go through death. Transformation always requires death.
You might wonder where Jesus Christ comes into this scenario since, as depicted in tradition, it is a universal phenomenon, independent of him. What Christ adds to the teaching of cyclical ages is the idea of a linear progression to the End Times and a glorious new creation. The Kali Yuga and the End Times have much in common in how they play out. The Kali Yuga even concludes with the incarnation of Kalki, an avatar of Vishnu, who ushers in a new Golden Age or Satya Yuga. However, this is still part of an ongoing cycle which doesn't really have a conclusion except in Mahapralaya which is the complete dissolution of the cosmos and return to non-manifestation. What Christ offers is different. It is a new creation, a new heaven and earth. This is not just another Golden Age which will inevitably degenerate. It is a radical restructuring of reality in which evil and suffering, decay and death no longer have any part, and it is open to all those who wish to partake in it with the proviso that they must also restructure themselves in accord with it. This, of course, is impossible in the literal sense but we can at least allow ourselves to be restructured by opening ourselves up completely to Christ. This entails not just belief but love.
Christ is the lifeboat that rescues us from the spiritual wreckage of the Kali Yuga. Increasingly, all people who regard themselves as on the spiritual path or who are just looking for answers in these times of universal decline, value inversion and all-pervasive spread of evil will find they have to turn to him. As time rushes on towards its final destination there really is no other solution.
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