The first indication of how much weight you are carrying, how much you have deteriorated is how fast the body turns into ash on your funeral pyre. The second is, cow. You must have heard of the phrases – ‘Doodh ki nadiyan beh rahi hain’and ‘khoon ki nadiyan beh rahi hain.’ The former indicates prosperity and latter symbolizes war/strife. Let’s see which of the two fits today’s scenario. Recently the local police informed us about a shocking reality – certain people pick up stray cows from the street, kill them in the car, sell them in the mandi and happily go back home with the money. This is just one example of the kind of atrocities being done on cows these days. How many of you were aware of this? And now that I have told you, how many of you care to do something about it? Hardly anyone. This is what this yug is all about, nobody can think anything beyond himself/herself.

The cow is a sign of prosperity, a sign of spiritual evolution. In the earlier yug, it was called ‘Gau dhan’ and in wars the victorious side used to take all the cattle with them. Why? Because the more cows one had, the more prosperous the person would be, the higher would be his/her level of evolution. So the ‘river of milk’ does not mean drinking a lot of milk but it is an indication of prosperity. Those who want to finish this culture; those are the ones who are involved in slaughtering cows the maximum, whichever community or religion they may belong to. When invasions started happening, the first thing these barbaric invaders would do is to kill the cows. They knew that this culture would only be finished when the cow is finished. Today we don’t even need invaders to do the job. We have left our cows to feed on garbage dumps and meet the painful death due to ingestion of plastic. While the invaders could not destroy our culture despite their best efforts, today we are busy bringing our own culture down by not being concerned about what is happening.

When you kill an animal, blood oozes out. So, today we are living in an era of ‘khoon ki nadiyan’. We cannot call ourselves prosperous anymore, every person is unhappy and troubled, no matter how much he/she has. Prosperity or aishwarya does not mean that you have abundance of material wealth; it means that you are happy and peaceful as you have everything you need. In today’s times is there even one person who feels that way? No and neither can there be because we have forgotten the basics of the vedic culture - karma, yagya (purification) and service to cow. How can you call yourself vedic if you do not perform havans or take care of the cows? You are busy finding solutions to your problems one after the other, and there is no end to it, because new problems will keep cropping up till the time you do not follow the laws on which this creation is founded. Till that time, creation will keep on devolving more and more.

The barbarians (termed mlechha in the vedas) came from extremely cold or extremely hot (desert) regions, where food was scarce as no cultivation was possible. For them, procuring food meant killing the animals, that is all they understood. It is your duty to teach them laws on which creation runs - karma, yagya and nurturing cows. None of you is doing that. You just sit and think after death you will go to heavens and enjoy, but nothing of that sort is going to happen. If you just start spreading the word about these things, the whole creation will change, otherwise the state is already miserable, and it will only get worse.

There is a sadhak who gets up every morning to do Surya Vandana. Her neighbours, who are supposedly celebrities, have instructed their guards to create smoke in the morning, just at the time of prayers. Because of the smoke, it is difficult for her to breathe. She asked them to stop, but they just would not budge. These are the indications of kaliyug. This is what the asurs do - create havoc wherever there is a havan, yagya, surya vandana or yog, trouble the rishis and munis, pollute the minds.

You don’t realise how much smoke you take in everyday from the nearby generators and from the leaves that guards burn to keep themselves warm in winters. When you breathe such air, you are bound to fall sick. And yet, you do not stop them. So you yourself are responsible for your devolution and that of the creation. The time of asurs has come again and if you don’t wake up soon, you will spell your own doom.

—The writer Yogi Ashwini Ji is the head of Dhyan Foundation, Delhi. For details contact: ashwiniyogi@yahoo.co.in