LUX PHARI YOGA

The Materialism of the Kali Yuga is exemplified by the people’s excessive attachment to wealth and physical pleasures. The focus is first on external possessions: money and our ability to trade it for tangible materials and tangible commons such as land, natural resources, and water. Thus, our ego’s striving for power is satisfied. Additionally, the overwhelming focus on our bodies, such as through sex, focus on improving our physical attractiveness, and our current issue of food overconsumption, shifts our energy to our bodies. Thus, our time is disproportionately concentrated on our flesh.

The shift from the spiritual to the material values signifies a loss of Dharma (moral duty).

The Vishnu Purana states, “wealth alone will be the deciding factor or nobility of birth, righteous behavior, and merit…Greed will dominate, and deceit will replace honesty.” (Book IV, p. 431). The modern focus and obsession with money and status exemplify this. Social media is filled with people flexing their wealth or telling others how to gain it. Universities care about the money one’s family has given the school for admission. Athletes, actors, and singers get paid more than those who contribute the most to society’s everyday running and function. One of the first things we as a society ask each other when we meet for the first time is what do you do? After which, we judge the social position of that individual and treat her or him accordingly. We do not care about the person. We care about where the person belongs.

The Srimad Bhagavatam predicts that religious practices will become neglected. Focusing on wealth rather than spiritual truths will breed corruption and political instability. The ego will force disunity. “People will worship wealth and status…Men will abandon their parents, brothers will quarrel, and truth will be twisted by greed” (Srimad Bhagavatam 12.2.3-5).

Similarly, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna contrasts people who are dominated by material greed from spiritual seekers. The former are described as those “Bound by a thousand desires, obsessed by lust and anger, they strive by unjust means to accumulate wealth for sensual pleasure” (16.12). Meanwhile, the latter rejects the above and are instead “content with whatever comes by chance, free of envy, unshaken by success or failure…never entangled” (4.22). Krishna emphasizes detachment and purity to escape the confines of materialism.

Theosophists link materialism to humanity’s spiritual decline and separation from the divine reality. Material obsession leads to personal and societal collapse. In the Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky writes, “Materialism blinds the soul, chaining it to earthly existence…spiritual consciousness fades as material greed reigns” (1888: 512). Materialism results from humanity’s descent from divine consciousness into the physical plane. Annie Besant, in Esoteric Christianity, linked materialism to social inequality, “The Unequal distribution of wealth, where some have far more than they need while others starve, is the outward sign of humanity’s inner spiritual blindness…Material possessions become false gods, worshipped at the expense of justice and compassion (1901: 198). Alice Bailey tied the internal spiritual struggle of humanity to external circumstances such as war. In Externalization of the Hierarchy, she writes, “Nations driven by material ambitions, selfish interests, and economic greed will fall into ruin, for spiritual poverty is the true cause of decay…The wars of modern times are the outer result of humanity’s inner struggle between material greed and spiritual awakening (1957: 338).

Taoist philosophy also condemns material attachment as a source of spiritual imbalance. “The more possessions you accumulate, the heavier your heart will be” (Laozi Ch.9). The early Christian monastic tradition mirrored Eastern views in that it emphasized poverty, simplicity, and charity, directly opposing the materialism prevalent in the Roman Empire. Jesus’ words in the New Testament resonate with Hindu concepts of detachment, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:19-20).