C H A P T E R   4

T H E   A G E   O F   K A L I
 

«… in this Age of Kali people are mostly short-lived, slothful, most dull-witted, unlucky and tormented with diseases and other evils.»

 (Bhagavata Purana 1, 1:7-10)  

According to Bhagavata Purana (1, 14:1 ff), the advent of the present Kali–yuga was heralded by portents of a fearful nature: the sacred images in temples seemed to weep and mourn, deception and misunderstanding polluted all dealings among relatives, and everywhere people were turning increasingly greedy and violent. Above all this, there prevailed severe disruptions in the characteristics of the 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 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 use of a “zero” year in the conversion to the Western calendar can account for the difference of one year.

Now as was said in Chapter 2, the precise start, on the midnight of the 18^th February of 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 there only were found three intervals of ten years in which there had been such an exact alignment.¹

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 an actual starting point (since, as in a common year, it is actually conventional), then it is very likely that there is some triggering factor, like the planetary synods described in Chapter 2, which might have caused additional climatic disturbances so as to precipitate the passage from one yuga to the next one. There is, regarding this, 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.²

In connection with the likely 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 experienced 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, considering the universality of the phenomenon, would have been a sort of preparation for the start of a new Era. I 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 spiritually more advanced than ours that 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, then 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 hypocrisy? If so, in which phase of it? And, is it possible that we have been in it so long (more than 5,000 years)?

As a matter of fact, giving answer to each of these questions 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 broad 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 take their birth 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 to 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 refers to as “the age of increasing corruption,” which entails the risk of total annihilation of mankind. We would be now in 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.»³

It is amazing that this accurate diagnosis of the epoch was formulated nearly one century ago, at a time when many voices predicted scientific and technical advances that would “very soon put an end to of all the worlds’ evils”, a progress that would bring “unlimited happiness” to humankind. Well, since then there have only been atrocious wars, the nuclear threat got 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 relentlessly drift 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?⁴ 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 very 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. Of course, the allusions to fire may refer to great volcanic eruptions or to the increasingly frequent forest fires that are currently taking place 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 has been previously defined, 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 referred to as “the beginning of end” would be actually situated around the year 2010 AC, a border line suggested at the end of the previous chapter. Moreover, if some other factors that would take too long to detail would be brought into the calculation, we would see that such “beginning” might already be 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.

NOTES
 

¹ RICHARD L. THOMPSON, op. cit., pp. 20–21.

² Actually, studies of this sort have been made in the past, although with more limited means. Kepler is said to have discovered, in 1603–1604, the conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and calculated that it occurs every 805 years; and an exact alignment of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn was predicted in some books for year 2000, information that our means unfortunately would not let us verify.

³ RENE GUENON: La crisis del mundo moderno, Mosca Azul, Lima, 1975, p. 41. See also by the same author : Le régne de la quantité et les signes des temps, Gallimard, Paris, 1972.

⁴ There is a serious study by the Red Cross, probably the most important that this entity has ever undertaken, whose main conclusion is that the situation depicted is absolutely real, global, and – even worse – irreversible as it has become a cyclic process of huge dimension. Initiated mainly with irresponsible tree chopping and excessive industrial emissions, this destructive cycle would seem to have been started not only to the effect of destroying all life on our planet, but also to end its very existence by raising the sea levels, thereby thoroughly changing the weather patterns and the seasons plus causing major landslides and draughts and all the other described phenomena. As to the likely date of the imminent collapse – or “rupture”, as it is called – the aforementioned entity calculated it at approximately 2010 AD.

HOME