Entropy and the concept of Yuga in Sanatana Dharma

One of the most common ideas on time in the Sanatana Dharma is the concept of Yugas. As far as I know there are 4 Yugas (which also possibly repeat themselves), but in general the four of them are :


  1. Satya Yuga
  2. Treta Yuga: SreeRama
  3. Dwapara Yuga: Sree Krishna
  4. Kali Yuga
And if you read about these yugas in any of our scriptures, be the Puranas, or the Bhagwath Geeta, the Bhagavatham, but there is a strong agreement in every school of thought regarding the yugas.

Now, what does this have anything to do with the second law of Thermodynamics: Law of Entropy

I just read through chapter six of the Fabric of the Cosmos by Dr. Brian Greene (obviously I watched the PBS Nova show as well, but I waited till I read the book to blog on this concept for better clarity).

Chapter six talks about the conundrum of how classical physics and our common perception of time are related to entropy. A vastly complicated topic for the purposes of this blog. But here is the gist:

  • The reason time seems to be "moving forward" is because the universe right after the big bang was in a state of low entropy (high order) and since then, while expanding, its been moving from low entropy to high entropy (high disorder)
  • This is the reason why everything that we observe in our daily life go from low entropy to high entropy ex: Ice melts, it doesn't un-melt;  egg splatters, but doesn't un-splatter etc.
Sure I have a few questions, which I have duly noted down and once I am done reading the whole book will send them out to Dr. Brian Greene, because while concluding the above there are certain assumptions made and I want to find out the rationale of these assumptions.

Now you ask, how are entropy and the concept of Yuga's related, i am sure a few smart people already must have got it:

You see, the concept of yugas goes this way, in the Satya Yuga, people were absolutely honest, there was no chaos in society, people were calmer, healthier and happier, all the vices that we attribute to the human condition were absent or very very limited back then, as time passed by and treta yuga came about the % of people with the vices went up, and the society and civilization went from total order, to some what of a chaos because of Ravana and the Rakshasas (think of the relative sweetness/honesty/truth bindingness of the Ramayana and lack of back breaking politics) things still were black and white (you could tell a demon from a deva), as time moved on dwapara yuga came about, the time of SreeKrishna, things started to grey around then, crazy politics, betrayals etc increased and civilization in general was in a higher mode of Chaos, of course these are the reasons, Lord Krishna had to be as shrewd as he was to deal with his adversaries and the times;( know more about it when you read the Mahabharata);
The same almighty who came as the ever innocent and pure SreeRama, could not afford to be so... for the lack of a better word, simple, in the dwapara yuga owing to the chaotic, disordered society (relatively).And if you read the Mahabharata (look up wikipedia) and read about what it claims about the KaliYuga, which entered by the end of the dwapara yuga, you will see, has led to the most chaotic of times where everything really is grey, the society technically has been in total chaos as far as western recorded history goes, with wars and hardships all over the world, sure there are golden periods at regular intervals, but you have to consider the overall picture, the majority of the time etc, I hope you get the drift.

So finally here is the one liner connection between the second law of thermodynamics and the yuga concept of time in the Sanatana Dharma:

Satya Yuga--- Lowest Entropy --High order
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Kali Yuga---- Highest Entropy--- High Disorder

And this is the nature of the universe set about right after the Big Bang per the understanding of Physics with the latest equipment costing billions of dollars..... they could've learnt it from us for free, we don't even charge for our knowledge, unlike them.

There are topics within this concept that I suspect and want to think over which will augment the above concept and cover a few holes in what modern physics hasn't yet figured out, will update sometime later once I understand what Sanatana Dharma says about my hunches.

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