Astrological Caste System?

I just want to quickly say that you cannot declare what someone’s “varna” is by looking at their horoscope! Especially not by simply looking at the Nakshatra of their moon. If you want to get some idea of where they most likely are on the spectrum of various varnas, for the purpose of selecting an ideal career – you can do that, if you blend the nakshatra in with the varnas of the rashi, navamsha, and planets. Here is an old example I once gave in this regard: Career Assessment in Vedic Astrology.

You cannot look at a horoscope and say – “you are a shudra” or “you are a vaishya” etc. etc. It is absolutely preposterous to anyone who understands the difference between the pre-modern, corrupt caste system and the beautiful, ancient varna system. The horoscope is an artifact of an individual’s birth. Social status based on a factor of birth is caste. It is bogus. The varna system is based on actual behavior and character (“guna and karma“). That is why Krishna declares in Bhagavad Gita catur-varnyam maya srishtham, guna-karma-vibhagasa - “I created the four social classes, differentiated by character and behavior.”

Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

How Long is Kali Yuga? – Addendum

Yesterday I posted this thought regarding evidence that the yugas may be shorter than most of us suspect. The greatly esteemed scholar Dr. Satyanarayan Babaji sent me a comment which unequivocally corrects the doubt raised in that post. With his permission, his comment is:

While commenting on the SB verse 1.4.14 Sri Jiva, Sri Visvanatha and some others explain that it was the end of Dvapara and not the beginning. The word tRtiye (lit. in the third) is taken to mean the third part of dvapara. Every yuga has three parts – the first sandhi (conjunction or twilight) part, the main part and the ending sandhi part. This is in harmony with the fact that Bhagavata was heard by Pariksita after its composition, and Mahabharata was first recited in the yajna of Janmejaya. Both Pariksita and Jamejaya were born towards the end of Dvapara.

This will not support the smaler span of the yuga theory.

How Long is Kali Yuga?

I am still in the process of researching this significant question and have not come to a conclusion, but here is some evidence that, at least for now, seems to bear very significant weight in my mind.

Srimad Bhagavatam 1.4.14 says that Vyasa began his work when the Second Age was on the verge of beginning.1.4.20 says that he began by creating the Rg and other three Vedas. 1.4.23 indicates that the further development of literature took place as a combined effort of sages under Vyasa’s leadership over a span of many generations. The remainder of the chapter and beginning of the next makes it clear that after seeing the compilation of so many expansive upanishads and puranas, Vyasa remained dissatisfied and later became inspired by Narada to create the Bhagavatam to remedy his dissatisfaction. So Bhagavatam is the last effort.

We hear elsewhere in the text itself that Bhagavatam was created just after Krishna’s departure from the Earth and the beginning of Kali Yuga.

Astronomically speaking we know with sufficient confidence that the Rg Veda created roughly 5,000 years ago – because it specifies that the “first star” was Krittika (Pleiades) and we can reconstruct the movement of the vernal equinox (the starting point of the celestial circle) to see that it was last in Krttika about 5,000 years ago.

This indicates that 5,000 years ago is when Vyasa began his efforts, not when he completed them by creating the Bhagavatam. So it seems to be a clear indication that 5,000 years ago was the beginning of the Second Age (Dvapara). And that Kali Yuga began several generations of sages after that.

This assessment does not support the long version of yugas as multiples of 1,000 years multiplied by 360. Rather it supports the short version of yugas simply as multiples of 1,000 years.

Please see this addendum correcting a mistaken concept in this post.

- Vic DiCara

http://www.vicdicara.com

Is Kali Yuga 1,200 years long or 432,000? When is Kalki coming!?

Question: 

Archaeology says modern humans have only been around for about 200 thousand years. Just one yuga is longer than this. Does it mean that all previous yugas were much shorter? it appears that they were even longer than kali yuga, which makes it impossible to fit in those 200000 years of human evoution span.

The 4th yuga (kali) is “x” in length. The 3rd is 2x. The 2nd is 3x. The 1st is 4x.
Between each yuga is a twilight, which is a tenth the length of the yuga.

So if the 4th yuga is “10 minutes” long, with twilights on either side it comes to 12. The 3rd (2x) is thus 24. The 2nd (3x) is 36. The 1st is “48 minutes” long.

The actual value for the 4th yuga (kali) is 1,000 years. It doesn’t matter if you are a god or a human or something else, it’s 1000 years. It’s just that if you are a god, you have access to 360 times the raw moments of time than a human does. Time is a constant, but perception of time is a relative subjectivity.

It is very confusing, I agree. Relative time is extremely confusing. Basically, if I tell you “let’s eat in five minutes”, we will eat in five minutes. But Einstein proposes that if we are traveling very close to the speed of light, our experience of 5 minutes will be equivalent to an experience of 500 years for someone on earth waiting to hear if we like the food. This is why the gods experience of the lengh of kali-yuga is equivalent to 432,000 years for humans on earth, even though in fact the duration of time is 1,200 years (360 times shorter).

Thus the value of the 4th age is absolutely 1,000 years, there are two twilights of 100 years each. So the total length of the age is 1,200 years. The 3rd age is 2,400 years. The 2nd is 3,600 years. The 1st is 4,800 years.

All for ages together form a “great age” which is 12,000 years long – which rings a bell with the precession of equinoxes, doesn’t it? 1000 great ages of the gods is a day for the creator, Brahma. After which he rests for the same duration and the entire universe falls apart to a large extent, including the Sun. So the Puranic idea is that the solar system is recreated every 8.64 billion years.

Brahma lives for 100 years, his time. So is is 8.64 billion x 360 (for his year) x 100. That’s up there in the trillions. That’s the puranic idea of how long a single universe exists before starting to be recycled.

When does Kalki appear and change the Kali yuga to Satya? Is it every 12,000 years from our point of view, or is it every 12,000 x 360 years (4,320,000 years).  The Puranas are written in celestial contexts. Their topics are not of mundane human affairs and they are delivered from sages to sages. The time context is, imo, celestial. When they say Kalki comes every kali-yuga I feel pretty certain that it means he comes once in every kali-yuga from the god’s perspective, which is once every 4,320,000 years from our perspective.

Yes, this is much longer than mainstream archaeology will accommodate. And while I agree that is certainly and important consideration that raises important questions, I do not feel that it is ALL-important and an automatic veto of the validity of Puranic concepts of historical time scales.
Question:

what’s you take on swami sri yukteswar giri’s take on misunderstnading of long count view?

Long vs. short yugas are not his invention. It is valid and integral to every puranic definition of yuga as well as the definitions given in the siddhanta and samhita.

It is most facinating to me that when the human-scale (“short count”) ages are taken, the puranic view of history matches quite closely to mainstream archaeology. But when the celestial-scale (“long count”) ages are used it matches closely with mainstream astronomy’s evaluation of the age of the universe.

This is not something Yukteshvar invented. What he invented was the idea that Kali does not change to Satya. He manufactured this idea. He says that after kali yuga there is another kali yuga. The traditional idea is that the ages go 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Yukteshvar invented the idea that they go 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1.

It is a very interesting idea, and perhaps useful. But it is something he invented and is not a classical idea.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com