Tuesday, May 27, 2008

About Year 2012

As I said in my "Message from the Author", since I was a young man I was fascinated by Oriental wisdom; more particularly, I was fond of anything that had to do with India. This fascination increased when I had the opportunity to study the doctrine of cosmic cycles (and later on to write about it) based on texts from Bhagavata Purana and other sources.

However, it was only after I made up my mind to translate my book "La rueda del tiempo" into English, and to start publishing fragments of this translation on Qassia and other channels, that I finally understood what probably was the real motivation behind my studies: I wanted to know WHEN the overall human cycle would end on this planet. And, would it be during my lifetime?

There was no morbid curiosity in it. Contrary to what many people may think, the doctrine of cosmic cycles is not at all pessimistic. If the stress is placed on the coming Golden Era rather than on the last stages of the present Age of Kali, it is, by far, optimistic. And we are talking about the end of our world, i.e. an order of things, and not about the end of the world. After the end of the current order of things, according to the doctrine, the Earth will know a new Golden Era in which everything will be again as it was at the start of the present great human cycle, when all beings lived in perfect and blissful harmony with the higher principles.

Be it as it may, thus far I have presented fragments of the book that cover half its chapters. Now I need to make a pause for a while in order to complete the whole translation before long. And although real hard work is awaiting me in the near future, in the meantime I will try to publish some more excerpts from it.

On the other hand, I must admit that I expect to make some money from the proceeds of the book, though this should come later. In the meantime, publishing fragments from it on other channels and formats, e.g. as Squidoo lenses, should yield as well some income. This, for me, is no trivial motivation either.

Back to “Year 2012”: those who have followed my blog series will probably know that the final date I have arrived at is any time now from 2010 to 2082, and that before the new millennium (or “New Age”, or “Golden Era”) arrives it is very likely that there is an early “beginning of end” on or about 2010-2012 plus a longer, last period of 72 years (the length of a degree of the cycle of precession of the equinoxes). By the way, this last period is referred to by the Tibetan Buddhists as “the time of no-time period”.

A friend of mine asked me once about when I was expecting the current age to end and the new one to arrive. Almost without thinking, I answered “By 2012 or so.” Maybe I was remembering reading something about 2012 on some book or article dealing with the Maya calendar, or maybe with the Persian or Judaic ones. At the time I did not suspect of the interest that this date would soon arouse.

Following are some interesting quotes about the year 2012 and the Maya Calendar from several sources (mainly Wikipedia).

http://www.armageddononline.org/Disaster-Prophecy/2012.html

December 21 — The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, notably used by the Maya civilization among others of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, completes its thirteenth b'ak'tun cycle since the calendar's mythical starting point (equivalent to 3114 BC August 11 in the proleptic Gregorian calendar, according to the "GMT-correlation" JDN= 584283). The Long Count b'ak'tun date of this starting point (13.0.0.0.0) is repeated, for the first time in a span of approximately 5,125 solar years. The significance of this period-ending to the pre-Columbian Maya themselves is unclear, and there is an incomplete inscription (Tortuguero Stela 6) which records this date. It is also to be found carved on the walls of the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, where it functions as a base date from which other dates are computed.However, it is conjectured that this may represent in the Maya belief system a transition from the current Creation world into the next. The December solstice for 2012 also occurs on this day.

Also (Hindu Calendar):

http://2012wiki.com/index.php?title=Hindu_Calendar

In the “Brahma-Vaivarta Purana”, Lord Krishna tells Ganga Devi that a Golden Age will come in the Kali Yuga - one of the four stages of development that the world goes through as part of the cycle of eras, as described in Hindu scriptures. Lord Krishna predicted that this Golden Age will start 5,000 years after the beginning of the Kali Yuga, and will last for 10,000 years.

And: Mayan Calendar Matches Hindu Calendar

It is interesting that this prediction of the emergence of a new world is prophesied to appear about the same time that the Mayans predicted it to come! The Mayan calendar began with the Fifth Great Cycle in 3114 BC and will end on 21 December 2012 AD.

The Hindu Kali Yuga calendar began on 18 February 3102 B.C. There is only a difference of 12 years between the Hindu's beginning of the Kali Yuga and the Mayan's beginning of the Fifth Great Cycle.

It is amazing that both calendars began at about the same time over 5,000 years ago and both calendars predict a totally new world and/or golden age after about 5,000 years into their calendars! We are definitely on to something with these Mayan and Hindu 2012 predictions. Historically, this is an amazing fact since these two ancient cultures did not have any contact.

(First published on Qassia 26 May 2008)