“OK People LOOK…” Vedic Tropical vs Sidereal Madness!

At the beginning of 2012 I finished my research into the actual definition of the zodiac in Sanskrit, Indian classical literature. I came undeniably to the conclusion that a lunar “zodiac” of 27 divisions exists in sidereal space. And that a solar zodiac of 12 divisions coexists in tropical space.

It was not hard to figure this out because the Puranas and Siddhantas I researched were completely clear about it, and there was no contradictory statement to be found anywhere. The hard part was gripping the fact so many centuries of Indian astrologers have mis-represented the solar twelvefold zodiac.

Respecting authority (sastra) over popularity / popular opinion I took the plunge and said, “OK, this is just the way it is and I have to accept that. The 27 nakshatras are sidereal but the 12 signs are tropical.”

Here’s my video, article, and Q & A all about it.

People reacted, and still are, with great confusion and, often, anger. The biggest reaction I get is,

“Who the hell are you to dare to be different?”

My apologies. But may I ask in return, “Who the hell are you to call yourself ‘Vedic’ yet make up your own definitions of things, in defiance of the Surya-Siddhanta and the Puranas, including Vishnu and Bhagavata Purana”?

Conversation usually stops there…

I admit I am not the greatest diplomat.

Among those who aren’t pissed off at me, the next largest group are just baffled and confused by the whole thing:

“You mean I’m a Capricorn now???”

Most of the baffled group are astrological “laypeople” trying to read their own recalculated charts and getting outstandingly confused.

Is this any different than it ever was before, though? The only reason “vedic” astrology fans “like” or “understand” their “vedic chart” is because they’ve wrestled with it for a year or more now to try figure out the sense in it. They take a look at a new version of their chart and are like, “Whoa, Nelly!!!! I just started making progress actually starting to understand the old version – why are you handing me something a bit different all of the sudden???”

Looking at the chart with cross eyes for maybe 5 seconds, to maybe 5 hours… they give up. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Friends, don’t you realize that all the ladies and gentleman outside of the “vedic” astrological bubble are exactly in the opposite position that you are. They’ve had their tropical charts for 10 years, struggling to beat some sense out of it, and if you hand them a sidereal version of their birth chart they are going to do exactly the same thing you are doing: look at it in bepuzzlement for 5 seconds – 5 hours, and then sigh and say, “this just isn’t for me – there’s no way I’m a Capricorn.”

The layperson’s confusion and inability to correctly read their chart (be it tropical or sidereal) doesn’t say anything about which one is the correct zodiac.  It just shows that laypeople get confused hella easy.

“We Want Proof!!!”

Next up you have the actual practicing astrologers or more learned laypeople who are graciously willing to give me 5 seconds – 5 hours of attention before they too get confused. Their reaction is, “OK, if this is right, show us proof!”

OK guys, can we please be honest here for several minutes:

(a) Since when has astrology of any type been able to scientifically “prove” anything beyond a doubt? Why don’t you ask me to do something feasible. 

(b) Astrology is incredibly complex, and is about a boatload more than just the 12 signs – be they tropical or sidereal. Don’t you realize that you can explain things a million different ways from a single chart? Have you ever seen two astrologers interpret even the same chart in the same way?

If we start debating the sidereal chart vs. the tropical chart we are just going to tire each other out because (i) there is a boatload of stuff that is the same in both, (ii) there are dozens of factors involved, almost always counterbalancing one another out when we switch a chart from sidereal to tropical.

Yes, eventually I am going to publish something showing how it is simpler and clearer to make accurate proclamations and predictions with a tropical 12-fold zodiac. No, I can’t show it to you in 5 minutes, because (a) it takes a gainormous amount of work, especially because (b) the vast majority of you  are so dead-set against it, I am going to have to write it out very carefully.

But,really, something has to be said here, or said again: If you purport to be “Vedic” don’t you realize that means you have implicit faith that the Vedas were written by people with lots more experience, understanding and realization than you or I? If you don’t have that faith please stop capitalizing or fantasizing with the terminology “Vedic”, “Hindu”, “Indian”, etc.

If you do have that faith, don’t you realize that if I establish Vedic Literature (viz. Purana and Siddhanta) unequivocally stating that the 12 signs are tropical, while the 27 nakshatras are sidereal -that is the proof!?!?

By the way, I have done that and no one has offered any refutation except the innane, “you can’t possibly understand it correctly, who the hell are you?” If you are really “Vedic” you are not going to start asking me for “proof” when I have already given you Vedic proof. What you should be doing is trying to find if and where my understanding of the Vedic sastra is flawed. If you can find that, please show me – clearly. Believe me, being the ambassador for the “Tropical Vedic Revolution” is ridiculously tiring and time consuming, and I would welcome a good excuse to give it up.

And this is not really a call to ultra-pure orthodoxy. It’s a practical scientific statement: You and I are confused. Drop the facade, none of us look at a horoscope and see the future with crystal clarity. All of us are confused and try our very best. We shouldn’t expect that our confused opinions are more important than the authorized opinions of our foundations: the Vedic literature.

“Keep Me Out of This Debate! I don’t want to make enemies, and I don’t want to upset my clients”

After the haters and the confused, this is the next group of reactions: neutrality. It might actually be very wise in a practical sense, but it lacks spine. I’m kind of let down by the number of colleagues who just prefer to ignore the importance of this debate. But I can respect it, and at times, I wish I also didn’t elect myself to become some champion of an increadibly underdog cause.

Then, finally there are about 2% of you – the people who “get it.” I just want to say, THANK YOU!

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

Divine Love and Romance in Purva Phalguni

English: Murti of Sri Krishna in an ISKCON temple (can’t remember which however). The original printout was a bit degraded so I had to re-treat it to make it usable. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In modern times, with the rise of extremely dualistic concepts of religion, we tend to conceive of a huge gulf between mater and spirit, god and pleasure, etc. This divisive conception is not embraced by Vedic culture. Certainly dualism has some relevance, for not all things are identical. Selfishness and selflessness, for example, are polar opposites – and thus so are lust and love. However, the Indian concept of divinity neutralizes, harmonizes, and integrates all opposites.

Bhaga is the god of “material” things such as romance, sex and marriage. Bhaga (in the form Bhaga-van) is also the most common classical Sanskrit term for a blessed being. The Purāṇas even define Bhaga-van as a moniker of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Thus the division between material and spiritual transforms.

Bhagavan means, “The possessor of Bhaga.” Sanskrit culture conceives of the Supreme Spirit as Bhagavan: a blissful, attractive, talented and romantic entity.

Parāśara Muni defines the word Bhagavān in Viṣṇu Purāṇa (6.5.79): “To fully possess happiness (bhaga) one must have all majesty, power, fame, beauty, knowledge and detachment.”

Bhaga gives majesty – which means status, influence and wealth. He gives power – which means heroism, bravery and strength. Bhaga also gives fame – which means celebrity and good reputation. He also gives beauty – which attracts others to participate in ones pleasures.

Money, power, fame, beauty… these first four are obvious and well known ingredients of a person who can enjoy great pleasures. Knowledge is a lesser known requirement. We need expertise and skill to really enjoy the pleasures of life. Bhaga, the god of pleasures, also gives detachment – because attachment causes suffering. If we are only attached to enjoying pleasures, we will inevitably suffer. To be detached requires knowledge of what one really is – a spiritual being, not just a collection of senses to please. So in addition to giving money, power, fame, and beauty, Bhaga also gives knowledge and detachment. The complete package of six traits grants supreme pleasure.

The personality of Godhead, especially in the intimate form of Śrī Kṛṣṇa, is recognized by Parāśara and his son Vyāsa as the person most fit to be named Bhagavān.[1]

Pūrva Phālgunī has the special ability to grant pleasures and wealth in a manner that befits a spiritually progressive person. It also can incline one to more deeply appreciate the spiritual pleasures and opulence of Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

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[1] Parāśara says so in Viṣṇu-Purāṇa. Vyāsa says so in Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 1.3.28

 

- Vic DiCara

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

Time Travel & Time Zones in the Universe

The simplest truth about time is that it is not what we commonly think it is.

We think of it as being a constant flow; like a drum-beat against which the song of the universe plays. But really it is a dancer moving to create the rhythms required by the universes’ song.

Ontology of Time

What is time? It is a byproduct of motion.

When one object moves relative to another, we can perceive time. If no objects move in any way, there is no perception of time. The universe itself has safeguards built in to protect against time stopping: the Sun constantly moves, at a fairly steady rate, relative to the Earth – and the non-stop motions of the Moon and 5 or 6 other heavenly objects add poly-rhythmic richness to the time flow built into fabric of the universe. Thus the Vedas, Puranas, Siddhantas et.al (and equivalent works from every human, including our modern civilization) measure time relative to the movements of the Sun, Moon, etc. The movements of the Sun and planets actually create our perception of time.

What is movement? It is change.

Why is there change? Because there is karma (destiny).

Why is there karma? Because there is independent will.

Why is there independent will? Because there is ignorance.

Why is there ignorance? Because there is freewill.

Why is there freewill? It is free, self-creating, lot dependent on another cause.

Time is a byproduct of freewill. Time as we experience it in the universe is a byproduct of freewill in an ignorant condition, operating quasi-independently from the fountainhead of freewill: Godhead. Such independence means independent responsibility, the agent of which is karma (destiny). Changes occur (and thus time is perceived) as the universe moves to fulfill the conditions required by destiny.

Time is therefore pushed forward by the collective desires of living entities, forcing the universe to move into shapes and conditions according to their desires.

Elasticity of Time

Time is not entirely rigid or constant.

Einstein believed that the speed of light creates a constant time-clock for the universe. This is really a brilliant conception because light is a form of the Sun, and the speed of light is a measure of the movement of that form of the sun relative to an observer. Einstein noted & demonstrated that the observer’s motion relative to light changes the perception of time itself.

Movements of the Sun (including the speed of light) create rigidity and consistency in universal time. But these are not absolute or insurmountable.

This is why different beings who have different relationships to the movement of the Sun / light have different conceptions of time. Time thus flows differently in different “lokas” (lokations).

Various “Time-Zones” in the Universe

Earth-Standard-Time

The Sun creates a day by moving around the earth once… because it spends half the time above it creating a bright period and the other half below it creating a dark period. So we observe a change between day and night. The change created by this motion allows us to perceive a certain duration of existence as a “day.”

Nether-Standard-Time

This is true for us humans, from our point of view. But other beings live at a locus (called a loka in Sanskrit) that doesn’t relate to this movement. In the netherworld called “Yamaloka,” for example, they relate to the Moon’s movement relative to the Earth and Sun. When the Moon is on one side of the Sun (waxing) it creates a bright period, and on the other side it creates a dark period (waning). These beings experience a ‘day’ to have as much raw time as our locus grants us within an entire month! 

Paradise-Standard-Time

Still other beings have yet another relationship to the Sun and light. In paradise, the “Sura” (gods) relate most directly to the Sun’s movement through the stars (which we translate to the Sun’s movement relative to earth’s equator). When the Sun is among stars equivalent to being northward of our equator, a bright period occurs (uttarayana). When it is among stars equivalent to it being southward of our equator, a dark period occurs (dakshinayana). These beings have in just one day all the span of time that is  available to us in an entire year!

Brahma-Standard-Time

There are still longer periods for higher demigods, culminating in the extremely vast timescale of Brahmaloka – the highest locus available within a universe – at which a single “day” has within it all the moments that are available to our human mind only in the course of more than 8.6 trillion years!

This timescale is not relative to the movement of the Sun at all, so much as to its existence and destruction!

Vishnu-Standard-Time

The ultimate generator of timeflow is the prana (“breath”) moving in and out of Mahavishnu. The inhalation is like “night” and the exhalation is like “daytime.” This period of time is transcendental to the Sun and light. It continues to allow change even when Brahma’s locus disintegrates and the universe dissolves.

Going Back in Time

Time is flexible but not completely. In all cases, it flows forward. It flows at flexible rates, but always in the same direction. This is the verdict of human culture, the Vedic records, and Einstein also demonstrated it in his equations pertaining to the relativity of time. Time can slow to almost a standstill, but it never flows backwards.

Still, “forwards” and “backwards” becomes a little bit irrelevant when you are talking about cycles. For example, winter comes after spring but also comes before it. Or another example: a chicken comes before an egg, but an egg comes before a chicken. These conundrums are simple truths because time flows forward in a circular motion.

It is not possible to move backwards in time, but if you move far enough forwards you eventually come to very, very similar conditions as existed in the past.

It is for this reason that some mystics say “past” and “future” are misleading concepts.

Multiple Realms in Multiple Universes

The Puranas describe Mahavishnu as lying in an ocean of causality, exhaling egg-like bubbles which each develop into an independent universe. Each universe has its own timeline, that mirrors the others but is not identical to it.

Within each universe there are many “dimensions” or “parallel realities” that are somewhat related and have intersections and access points at various locations under various conditions. Thus there are parallel realities transpiring within each parallel universe. 

“It is always noon somewhere on earth.” Similarly there is always a certain point in history extant somewhere among the universes. But we cannot hop skip and jump between universes, we are confined by what we perceive as the vast, vast distances between them.

Each universe is a closed system in which there are souls (jiva) with independent will creating destiny and motion. A particle cannot leave a system while it is still in motion within that system. Souls in a universe remain there until it is dissolved or until they dissolve their independent will, end their destiny, and become eligible for liberation (moksha).

~~~

Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com