Time I am....

image:http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/images/gallery/vedas.jpg

Not many of us know, even an iota of what is being passed down the generations in the form of the sacred Vedas. Many of us do not even know what the Vedas imply. Whatever we claim to know have come from lending our ears to other people's talk of whom we know very little or most of the times their authority over the Vedas is very much questionable. Second and the most important source are the books. Common man's knowledge is very much limited at least with respect to the scriptures. And it is widely believed and claimed as true and is attributed to the fact that the scriptures are written in a highly arcane alien language called "Sanskrit" which no one can understand. Of course it is true that the scriptures are mostly in Sanskrit, but it is not a language which no one can understand but the truth is that no one wants to understand because no one has to. Had the mother tongue of United States of America been Sanskrit or that of China there is profit in shelling out money to learn it but what good does learning Sanskrit for scripture deciphering do to a common man in meeting his everyday needs?

And if at all, when a common man gets to lay his hands on some commentaries on the arcane scriptures, he gets the essence of the message conveyed in a pejorative sense. Why? Because most of the commentaries in the easily understood language (English) by the highly acclaimed western historians. And I have already expressed the credibility of such commentaries in the previous threads.
When I started to write this, I questioned my authority and felt belittled, but later, I realised the necessity to continue writing at least to share my knowledge and understanding with you guys.
The present plight of Sanskrit as a language just reminds me of the plight of the language English in the novel Time Machine by H. G. Wells. This was depicted very well in the movie by the same name starring Guy Pearce.


Guy Sormon, the author of genius of India states," Temporal notions in Europe were overturned by an India rooted in eternity. The Bible had been the yardstick for measuring time, But the infinitely vast time cycles of India suggested that the world was much older than anything bible spoke of. It seems as if the Indian mind was better prepared for the chronological mutations of Darwinian evolution and astrophysics."
So what is the time scale according to the Vedas? Where are we? How much mature creations are we?
The time cycles are infinitely vast as quoted by Sormon.
Every time unit can finally be concocted to the lifetime of Brahma, one of the trinity gods who is in charge for creation. But where does he come from?
Brahma has a birth also. He is born from the eternal god, Lord Vishnu who is unchanging with time. "Time I am...."
Lord Brahma is seated on the lotus blossoming from the navel of lord Vishnu. Is this an allegory of the Big Bang? Universe is expanding from a single spot following the Big Bang. Is that single point the navel of Vishnu and can the universe be compared to Brahma on the lotus? If true, then there can be more than one universe leading unto the theory of multiverses. Of course, the navel is the sprouting place of new life!
Now Brahma lives for 100 years and then dies and is reborn again and this process continues forever. Thus, this universe is bound to implode after expanding for quite long time while Vishnu is going to be unchanging ( my inference). 100 years of Brahma's life time has a totally different meaning when compared to 100 years of a normal man's life time.
Kalpa, Manvatara, Mahayuga, Yugas are the different terms that we will encounter from here.
A Kalpa refers to one day of Brahma and one night of Brahma is as long as one day. One day of Brahma has 14 Manvantaras and a night is equally long. But during night Brahma is supposedly sleeping. Each manvantara is 71 Mahayugas long and each Mahayuga is a collection of the four yugas: Satya, Treta, Dwapara, and Kali. The life span of humans changes with every yuga.
1 Kali Yuga is 432000 solar years which are 10 % of the lenght of a Mahayuga. So, one Mahayuga is 4320000 solar years.
Solar/Human Years Life time (years)
1 Satya Yuga - 1,728,000 100,000
1 Treta Yuga - 1,296,000 10,000
1 Dwapara Yuga - 864000 1000
1 Kali Yuga - 432000 100
Now calculating the life time of Brahma in terms of the human life time,
1 Mahayuga is 4,320,000 years and 1 Manvantara has 71 Mahayugas ==>
1 day of Brahma has 994 Mahayugas.
In each Brahma's day there are fourteen Manus (patriarchs of mankind).After the dissolution of every Manu a new Manu comes. With the change of Manu the universal management also changes. Vedas also describe about a kind of transition periods between Manvataras which are as long as 4 yugas.Each manvantara periods ends with a partial devastation and starts with a partial recreation of the universe.
So 1 day of Brahma = 994 Mahayugas + 60 Yugas => 1000 Mahayugas = 4,320,000,000 years.
1 night + 1 day = 8,640,000,000 years (8.64 billion years).
We live in Kali-yuga of the 28th Maha-yuga of the 7th Manvantara(vaivashatha) of the 12th kalpa
(called Sveta-Varaha), in the 51th year of Brahma. The beginning of this kalpa was 2.3 billion years ago (453 mahayugas back).
The life span of Brahma is identical with the duration of the universe. This time span, called a maha-kalpa, is also the duration of one breathing in and out of Maha-Vishnu, the Personality of Godhead. Maha-Vishnu lies down within the ocean of causality and sleeps. He is eternal, and He dreams the material world in His cosmic slumber. When He exhales, all the universes emanate from the pores of His skin, and a Brahma is born within each universe. When He inhales, Brahma dies, and He sucks the universes into His mouth and destroys them. With each exhalation, the entire process starts anew. This cycle goes on eternally and is therefore also called eternal time.
There are 360 days in a year for Brahma and we are in the first day of 51st year.
So far 360 x 50= 18000 days have passed for Brahma
This is equivalent to 18000 x 2000 x 4320000 Human Years
In other words 155,520,000,000,000 Human Years.
So its been 155,522 billion years since the formation of universe and still the same time to go for the collapse of the universe to come while modern science predicts the present age as jst 15-25 billion years.
From the first chapter of Surya-Siddhanta, the most revered authoritative source of Hindu astronomy, we have the following passage:
11. that which begins with respirations (prana) is called real…….Six respirations make a vinadi, sixty of these a nadi:
12. And sixty nadis make a sidereal day and night. Of thirty of these sidereal days is composed a month; a civil (savana) month consists of as many sunrises;
13. A lunar month, of as many lunar days (tithi); a solar (saura) month is determined by the entrance of the Sun into a sign of the zodiac; twelve months make a year. This is called a day of the gods.
14. The day and night of the gods and of the demons are mutually opposed to one another. Six times sixty of them are a year of the gods, and likewise to the demons.
15 & 16. Twelve thousand of these divine years are denominated a chatur-yuga; of ten-thousand
times four hundred and thirty two solar years is composed that chatur-yuga, with its dawn and
twilight. The difference of the krita-yuga and the other yugas, as measured by the difference in the number of the feet of virtue in each is as follows:
17. The tenth part of a chatur-yuga, multiplied successively by four, three, two, and one, gives the length of the krita and the other yugas: the sixth part of each belongs to its dawn and twilight.
18. One and seventy chatur-yugas make a manu; at its end is a twilight which has the number of years of a krita-yuga, and which is a deluge.
19. In a kalpa are reckoned fourteen manus with their respective twilights; at the commencement of the kalpa is a fifteenth dawn, having the length of a krita-yuga.
20. The kalpa, thus composed of a thousand chatur-yugas, and which brings about the destruction of all that exists, is a day of Brahma; his night is of the same length.
21. His extreme age is a hundred, according to this valuation of a day and a night. The half of his life is past; of the remainder, this is the firsts kalpa.
22. And of this kalpa, six manus are past, with their respective twilights; and of the Manu son of Vivasvat, twenty seven chatur-yugas are past;
23. Of the present, the twenty eighth chatur-yuga, this krita yuga is past……..
For more reading you can go to...
http://veda.wikidot.com/kala-chakra
One another description from Bhagavatham based on atom spacing:
The atomic description of the Srimad Bhagavatam is almost the same as that of modern science. This is further described in the Paramanu-vada of Kanada. Time is measured in terms of its covering a certain space of atoms. Standard time is calculated in terms of the movement of the sun. The time covered by the sun in passing over an atom is calculated as atomic time.

During the period of one month the moon wanes and is called krishna-paksha, the dark moon or amavasya. In the same month the moon waxes and is called shukla-paksha, the full moon or purnima. Thus purnima to amavasya is called krishna-paksha (dark moon) and amavasya to purnima is called shukla-paksha (bright moon). Two months equal one season. During the first six months the sun travels from south to north (uttarayana). During the second six months the sun travels from north to south (dakshinayana). Two solar movements equal one day and night of the demigods.
For more reading: http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/encyclopedia/time.htm
So, the time scales mentioned in Vedas go from respirations and atoms to billions and beyond imaginations. How ingenious and brilliant must have been a mind to even imagine and think of such a large time line with so much accuracy?
So what conclusion does it lead to?
I see no conclusion but it only increases my hunger.
I watched all the episodes of Cosmos by the famous Astro-Physicist Carl Sagan. He talks about things that we cannot imagine: about parallel universes, fourth dimension and so on……… It is an amazing piece of documentary. In there, he quotes in the 6th part, “The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still.”