There is a great deal of propaganda afoot that
something dramatic will happen in 2012 and maybe the world will end…
We have information from the Vedic scriptures about the nature of this material world. Very extensive information is given about the cycles this world goes through over and over again. It is not that we are in uncharted territory. These cycles repeat, just like every year we have the four seasons. The cycle of the seasons repeats over and over again. Similarly the cycle of the four ages or yugas also repeats over and over again. As we know each of the seasons will last for three months and then the next season will start these four ages or yugas also repeat in a very systematic way.
There are four yugas, Satya-yuga – the golden age, lasting 1,728,000 years; Treta-yuga – the silver age, lasting 1,296,000 years; Dvapara-yuga – the bronze age, lasting 864,000 years; and finally Kali-yuga – the iron age of machines and quarrel, lasting 432,000 years.
We are in the final age, Kali-yuga. So in one sense you could call the end of Kali-yuga the “end of the world.” But actually Kali-yuga is no more the end of the world than winter is the end of the seasons. After the winter there will be another spring. At the end of winter everything looks dead. But with the sunshine of spring everything becomes rejuvenated and new life springs up all over the planet. So at the end of this Kali-yuga everything will be very baron and devastated. However that is just like the end of winter. Just like the end of winter means the beginning of a new spring season, there will be another Satya-yuga or golden age and everything in the universe will be rejuvenated again.
There will be some big devastation at the end of the Kali-yuga. But we have just started the Kali-yuga. This age will last for 432,000 years and so far we have only passed 5,000 years of it. So that means that Kali-yuga still has another 427,000 years to run… So please be assured that the world is not going to end in the year 2012… Believe it or not the world will still be going on in the year 429,000. Around this time the current Kali-yuga will end and there will be some devastation and a renewal which will usher in a new Satya-yuga…
So this claim that the “end of the world” is coming in 2012 is complete nonsense. There is no end to the material world. Although everything here in this world — except the living entities (the spirit souls, the atmas) — including the planet and the universe itself, is ultimately a temporary manifestation. Everything has a time of creation and will have a time of destruction.
However, in the bigger picture, the destruction is not actually a destruction. It is simply an exercise in the conservation of energy. Einstein came up with the proposition that both energy and matter cannot be destroyed. They can only be transformed from one form to another. This is the correct understanding.
There is a time when the universe will be destroyed. The universe will exist for one thousandcatur-yuga cycles. That is one thousand cycles of the four ages [Satya-yuga, Treta-yuga, Dvapara-yuga and Kali-yuga]. Each cycle of four yugas takes 4,300,000 years. Therefore the “life” of the universe is 4,300,000,000 years or 4.3 billion years. We have currently passed through approximately half of that time. So the universe is about 2.15 billion years old at the moment. So in another 2.15 billion years the whole material world — not just our universe — the entire material creation of an unlimited number of universes, will all be destroyed.
However, as I mentioned before, this is not actually a “destruction” but a conservation of matter and energy. All the matter which forms the material elements in the universe will be conserved in the “mahat-tattva.” This means the “unmanifested material energy.” The material world has two possible states. Manifest and unmanifest. Currently it is manifest and we are here in the material world. But after the completion of approximately 2.15 billion years there will really be a complete and total devastation of the whole material existence. That is the ultimate “end of the world” that all the doomsday people are waiting for. I think that devastation will satisfy them. At that time the whole material existence will be “destroyed” and will become unmanifested for another one thousand catur-yuga cycles.
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