Continued from page 3)

At the beginning of the kalpa, creation begins. At the end of the kalpa, there is dissolution and Brahma the creator, goes to sleep, as it were. During one kalpa 14 manu's rule the world of humans one in each  manvantara.  Each manvantara is preceded and followed by a period of 1,728,000 years) when the entire earthly universe (bhU-loka) will submerge under water. The period of this deluge is known as manvantara-sandhyA (sandhyA meaning, twilight).   
The kali-yuga in which we are in now will be followed by the satya-yuga of the next mahA-yuga, namely the 29^th mahA-yuga, and so on cyclically. When 71 mahA-yugas of this manvantara are over, there will be a twilight period as stated above and then the next (8^th) manvantara goes on and then the 9^th manvantara, and so on. When the 14 manvantaras are over, Brahma's day is over and Brahma's night begins. At that time the created universe (including the Sun, the stars and everything that was created at the beginning of the kalpa)  will merge into the Absolute and Brahma Himself 'sleeps' as it were. When Brahma's night (of the same duration as His day) is over,  the next kalpa begins and Brahma begins His work of creation again, deriving the strength and power from the Absolute once again as He did in the previous kalpas.  This way Brahma's days and nights are counted 360 times to make one  year of Brahma's life. The tradition says that it is the 51^st year of Brahma now and in the 51^st year it is the first day, in which again five and a half 'hours' out of 'twelve' hours have elapsed of His time. Thus with respect to  Brahma's calendar the present time may be coded as 51^st year - first month - first day - 7^th manvantara - 28^th mahA-yuga - 4^th yuga or kaliyuga . The period of kali-yuga is just 4.32 'seconds' of Brahma's time!

Portion of Brahma's day elapsed up to the present time (2000 AD, say) consists of
6 manvantara-twilights
(one preceding  each manvantara):  6 ´ 4k;

6 manvantaras completed :    6 ´ 71 ´ 10k;

1 manvantara-twilight
preceding  the 7^th manvantara:  4 k;

27 mahA-yugas elapsed in this manvantara : 27 ´ 10k;

  three yugas elapsed  (namely satya, tretA
and dvApara)  in this 28^th mahA-yuga:  (4+3+2) k;

and,  years elapsed in present kaliyuga 5102

All this adds up to  4567 k + 5102    =  1,972,949,102  human years.

This is the age of the universe in this day of Brahma as of 2000 AD.

August 9,  99  ©Copyright  V. Krishnamurthy  Home  Contents   Next