YUGA describes five falls—the Fall into Time, the Reign of Quantity, the Mutation into Machinery, the End of Nature, and the Prison of Unreality. Taken together, these comprise the fate of historical humanity and are, the author is convinced, one-way trips. And the urban-industrial-vehicular-commercial-technological-pharmaceutical-electronic-information-spectator secular society they have produced has ripped the human world to shreds. . . . The book is hard-hitting, but readers who find it disturbing overlook the invincible beatitude that undergirds its every line. When we awaken from our modern nightmare—as sooner or later we all shall—this book will help us remember what that nightmare was. In YUGA the perennial wisdom has found a new and clarion voice.
Glass’s poetic and novelistic vocabulary, combined with exhaustive and blithely eclectic research, the mind-boggling diversity of his sources and references, even the peculiar Table of Contents, is a radical departure. Equally at home with the Diamond Sutra and the Grundrisse of Karl Marx, while being a careful student of magazine displays at the checkout counters of supermarkets, the author cheerfully presents his book as a provocation rather than as argument.
But the master achievement of YUGA, which lies neither in its ‘argument’ nor its style, is its voice. That voice speaks so palpably from the author’s heart that we find it resonating in our hearts as well. The final pages of YUGA are celebrations of joy and love, and the discerning reader will detect those qualities lurking between the lines of the book’s every page. For remember, Marty Glass is a spokesman for the truth that underlies all the world’s wisdom traditions. Behind the world of appearances—samsara, maya, and the shadows on Plato’s cave—stands the uncreated Light, Reality, which is eternal Bliss. This reality speaks to individuals in the darkest of times, and its grace never falters. No one need be completely captive to history’s downward trajectory. Its dream unfolds, and we can actually love that dream if we are awake to the fact that it is we ourselves that are, collectively, the immortal Dreamer. The message of YUGA is the message of Tradition, the Sophia Perennis. — Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions, etc.
For those seriously concerned with the plight of present-day humanity and the unprecedented crises through which human society is passing, this book offers many profound insights. It can offer guidelines and openings onto the understanding of the traditional world and that perennial wisdom whose loss has brought about the present age of spiritual darkness. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr, author of Knowledge and the Sacred, etc.
