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)

More about the Kali Yuga

So the questions about the Kali-yuga that were pending solution are: Are we really in the Kali–yuga, the age of quarrel and darkness? If so, in which phase of it? And, is it possible that we have been in it so long (more than 5,000 years)?

I will try to answer all three of them in this post.

As a matter of fact, giving answer to every question will depend on the point of view that we take. We are dealing with directly opposite perceptions of a vast problem that also implies, considering the long time involved – virtually the whole history of our so-called civilization – such additional questions as: Were the Greeks and Romans really greater than the Egyptians, the builders of huge pyramids and majestic temples several thousands of years before the Greeks made their appearance in the world? Among the Greeks themselves, were the contemporaries of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle wiser than Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Tales’ colleagues? And – skipping the wide time-span – were the European Middle-Ages really inferior to the Renaissance, and if so, in what sense? What can be said, for example, of the Empire of Charlemagne, the earlier Romanic churches, and of Gothic art, which was an entirely original art and not an imitation of classic art as that of the so-called Renaissance was?

Again, is the present time an age of immense progress as depicted by the technocrats, or rather a progression into chasm in every sense?

As is commonly known, India is at present probably the only country in the world where the traditional spiritual values have been kept almost in their entirety. So it is only natural that, from an eminently spiritual perspective, the traditionalist Hindus view the whole of the last 5,000 years of history as a process of gradual deterioration in all orders and life conditions, a process in which the nefarious atmosphere of the Kali-yuga has finally spread through everything, and materialism, real or disguised, has set its supremacy on the world. This is particularly due to the fact that, not existing a qualified priesthood anymore, the administration of society has fallen on the hands of the lower-class people whose sole motivation is personal gain. As a consequence, there exist a growing anxiety in the minds of men, increasingly impatient, greedy and violent, and a mounting degradation of customs that ends out in family disintegration and a disorderly sexual conduct which will inevitably result in a large part of the world population being “unwanted,” that is, born from illicit coupling, including sexual assault, or simply “by accident.” As if all this were not enough, there is an increasing deterioration in the quality of everything, even food; and there appear awful and previously unknown diseases that result from the increase of artificial needs and the proliferation of the most pernicious habits. It is in sum, for those Hindus that have not been seduced by the false glow of Western progress, an atheistic, violent and degraded Era in which goodness virtually does not exist anymore (according to Varaha Purana, “demonic beings are born in it”), an Era which can only lead to a final cataclysm.

For the rest, such symptoms have not gone unnoticed to some Western reputed scholars, among them Oswald Spengler, the famous author of The Decline of the West, and Alexis Carrel, the author of the notorious and most controversial L'Homme, cet inconnu (“Man, The Unknown”); but above all by René Guénon, for whom we are essentially dealing with a process whose ultimate cause merely resides in the increasing estrangement from the principle from which the whole manifestation derives, a situation that has become irreversible and is primarily characterized by a progressive secularization and materialization of the world – in other words, by a gradual darkening of the primeval spirituality. This fatally results in a total reversion of the universal values, a reversion that aggravates as we move toward the end of the cycle and which is nourished by the fallacy of an unrelenting evolution and progress. Actually Guénon distinguishes a fifth cyclic phase within the Kali–yuga which he calls “the age of increasing corruption,” which entails the risk of total annihilation of mankind. We would be now on the dreadful times announced by the sacred books of India where «all castes will be intermingled», where «family itself will no longer exist». Disorder and chaos prevail in all orders and have reached a point that exceeds by far all that had been previously seen; a stop would no longer be possible, since according to the warnings from the traditional doctrines, we have indeed entered the final phase of the Kali-yuga, «the darkest period of the Dark Age».

It is amazing that this accurate diagnosis on the time was formulated nearly one century ago, at a time in which many voices prophesized a scientific and technical advancement that would “very soon put an end to all the worlds’ evils”, a progress that would bring “unlimited happiness” to humankind. Well, since then there have only been atrocious wars, the nuclear devastation threat was started, unknown diseases appeared, and moral, social and political decay has reached extreme levels throughout the world to such an extent, that the entire society would seem to drift inexorably toward anarchy. Violence has become common to an unheard-of extent particularly in the large cities, which are literally submerged in drugs and pornography, and where it shows up in atrocious modes like urban terrorism. Actually we only need to open the papers to become horrified at the profusion of news on religious and racial slaughter and unbelievably brutal terrorist deeds and, on the other hand, to be appalled by the gradual, increasingly accelerated deterioration of the environment, the growing contamination of rivers, seas and lakes, the extinction of forests and whole animal species by the hand of man, the more and more frequent natural disasters which, caused basically by the current global warming (in turn forced by a disproportionate boom of the industrial activity) include the progressive desertification of the Earth, atmospheric exhaustion, draughts, floods, earthquakes and cataclysms resulting in casualties by the millions every year… do I need to continue? Indeed, there is every reason to believe that we are in the last days of the present cycle and that the end of our civilization, as we know it, is close at hand, irrespective of what the believers in a “future of material and moral progress” of the human race may claim. This admitted, we would only need to deal with how that end would be like.

According to Bhagavata Purana (3, 11:29 ff), at the end of the “millennium” the devastation is produced, at an early stage, by the «fire that is emitted by the mouth of Sankarsana», which wreaks havoc on the “three inferior worlds” during one hundred years of the demigods (36,000 human years). This version matches exactly a Nordic tradition according to which at the time of the world destruction (the ragnarok), from the mouth of Surt, “the Black One”, radiate devastating flames. Naturally, the allusions to fire may refer to great volcanic eruptions or to the increasingly frequent forest fires that currently take place all around the world. Then, during other 36,000 years, there are gales and torrential rains accompanied by raging waves that cause the seas to overflow, a devastation which, in the view of the experts in the Hindu scriptures, occurs at the end of the period of each Manu. Of course, on the human level, the afore-mentioned figures are to be considered symbolic; in connection with the Manvantara as was previously defined in my last post, the 72,000 years of devastation, which in the context correspond to the 4,320 millions of years of a Brahma’s day, very likely are only equivalent to 72 years, so that what I have just referred to as “the beginning of end” would actually be situated around the year 2010 AC, a border line suggested at the end of that post. Moreover, if other factors that would take too long to detail were brought into the calculation, we would see that such “beginning” might actually be already occurring, as is unfortunately clear from the unprecedented rise in the climatic disorders of our days – one of whose most visible manifestations is the recurring onslaught of the "El Niño" phenomenon – which would be announcing an imminent disaster of universal proportions.

(First published on Qassia Mar 8, 2008)

The Kali Yuga

According to Bhagavata Purana (1, 14:1 ff), the advent of the present Kali–yuga, the age of quarrel and hypocrisy, was heralded by portents of a terrifying nature: the sacred images in temples seemed to weep and mourn, deception and misunderstanding polluted the dealings among relatives, and everywhere people became increasingly greedy and violent. Above all this, there prevailed severe disruptions in the characteristics of seasons.

This would have occurred in 3102 BC as the Dvapara–yuga (or third yuga) of the twenty-eighth “millennium” of the seventh and present Manu, Vaivasvata, came to an end.

Confirming the starting date, Aryabhata, a famous Hindu astronomer born in 476 BC, writes that he was 23 years old when 3,600 years of the present Kali–yuga had elapsed, which yields 3,600 – 23 – 476 = 3101 BC. The difference of one year can be accounted for by the use of a “zero” year in the conversion to the Western calendar.

Now as I said in a previous post (“More about Maha-yugas and Kalpas”) the precise start, on the midnight of 18 February in 3102 BC, was presided by an alignment of the seven traditional planets, including the Sun and Moon. According to the jyotisha–shastras, the texts of astronomy of the old Hindus, this is perfectly normal: the Surya–siddhanta, for example, which measures the time in days from the beginning of the Kali–yuga, assumes that the positions of all planets, in their two cycles, are aligned at “zero” day in relation to the star Zeta–Piscium, which is used by the said shastras to measure the celestial longitudes. Such alignment would have had minimal deviations and anyway, it would be a very rare phenomenon, as from that date to our days were only found three intervals of ten years in which there had been such exact alignment.

Here the question arises: why should the passage from one age to the next be determined by an alignment like the one depicted, if it is rather the cycle of precession of equinoxes the key factor for determining the length of the human cycle? To give a precise answer is not very easy; but if we consider that the circumference described by the Earth’s axis does not have a real starting point (since, as in a common year, it is actually conventional), it is very likely that some triggering factor, like the planetary synods or grouping of all the planets on one side of the sun while the Earth is on the other (which occur every 180 years approximately) could cause additional climatic disturbances to precipitate the passage from a yuga to the next. With regard to this, there is a suggestive connection with the fact that the "El Niño" phenomenon, which such dreadful disorders caused in recent years, appears to have begun in the year 3100 BC approximately; and we may also remember the concept of a “perfect year,” the time the planets take to align themselves back again at their startup point, which coincides with the “great year” of 12,960 common years of the Greek and Roman traditions.

In connection with the probable starting point of the present Kali–yuga, some authors have highlighted the fact that, at some time in the sixth century BC, the traditional doctrines underwent diverse re-adaptations and reformulations in several key areas of the world: in Greece by Pythagoras, in Persia by Zarathustra, in China by Confucius, etc., re-adaptations which, given the universality of the phenomenon, would have been a sort of preparation for the start of a new Era. We must admit that this date around the sixth century BC, while imprecise, sounds more plausible as a starting point than 3102 BC, which crashes frontally with the believe in an uninterrupted progress of humanity from the development of agriculture and the invention of writing onwards. Yet in favor of 3102 BC can be argued, apart from the unusual planetary alignment depicted, the singular coincidence with the “zero year” of the start of the Mayan and Egyptian civilizations (in 3113 BC the former, around 3100 the latter), without a doubt significant as such start coincides with the beginning of writing around the world and seems to draw, for the same reason, a veil between history proper – the written history – and pre-history, about which virtually nothing is known with absolute certainty. In the other hand, it has been suggested, based on astronomical calculations, that the great epics Mahabharata would date back from 3100 BC as it would be partially contemporary of Satapatha Brahmana, where it is said that the Krittikas (the Pleiades) «do not turn from the East» – i.e. they were on the celestial Equator. Add to all this the persistent allusions, both in oral and written tradition, to ancient, highly sophisticated civilizations that were spiritually more advanced than ours and disappeared as a consequence of dreadful cataclysms which erased all traces of their passage on Earth, and the picture becomes more complete: if one or more of these civilizations existed before our written history, it would push the specific weight of history back by several millennia and turn the year 3102 BC into a comparatively recent date.

But let us deal with the difficulty that is obviously central in our study: ¿Are we really in the Kali–yuga, the age of quarrel and darkness? If so, ¿in which phase of it? And, ¿is it possible that we have been in it for so long?

I will try to answer these questions on my next post. Stay tuned please.

(First published Qassia 25 Feb 2008)