Women of good birth will abandon themselves to the desires of the basest of men and perform obscene acts.
Men will devote themselves to earning money; the richest will hold power. Those who own many elephants, horses, and chariots will be kings. People without assets will be their slaves.
The state leaders will no longer protect the people but, through taxes, will appropriate all wealth. Farmers will give up their work of plowing and harvesting to become unskilled workers (kârû-karmä) and adopt the customs of outcastes. Many will be dressed in rags, unemployed, sleeping on the ground, living like paupers.
Through the fault of the public authorities, many children will die. Some will have white hair by the time they are twelve.
In these times the path marked out by the sacred writings will become obliterated. People will believe in illusory theories. There will no longer be any morality, and as a result life expectancy will be shortened.
People will accept theories promulgated by anyone as articles of faith. False gods will be worshiped in false ashrams in which fasts, pilgrimages, penances, donation of possessions, and austerities in the name of the would-be religion will be arbitrarily decreed. People of low birth will put on religious costumes and, by their deceptive behavior, will make themselves respected.
People will eat their food without washing. They will respect neither the household fire nor the hosts.
They will not perform funerary rites.
Students will not observe the rules of their state.
Successful men will no longer make offerings to the gods, nor will they make gifts to deserving people.
Hermits (vanaprasthä[s]) will eat the food of the middle class, and monks (sannyâsî[s]) will have amorous relationships (snehä-sambandhä) with their friends.
The workers (shudrä[s]) will call for equality with the scholars. Cows will be kept only for their milk.
The poor will pride themselves in their poverty and women in the beauty of their hair.
Water will be lacking, and in many regions people will watch the sky, hoping for rain.
There will be no rain; the fields will become barren; fruit will no longer have any flavor. Rice will be scarce. People will drink goat's milk.
People suffering in the drought will eat bulbs and roots.
They will be without joys and pleasures. Many will commit suicide. Suffering from famine and poverty, unhappy and driven to despair, many will migrate toward countries where wheat and rye are growing.
Men of little intelligence, influenced by absurd theories, will live under a delusion. They will ask: What use are these gods, priests, holy books, and ablutions? The ancestral lines will no longer be respected. The young husband will go and live with his parents-in-law. He will say: What is the significance of a father or a mother? Everyone is born and dies according to his actions, his Karmä. (Family, clan, and race therefore have no meaning.)
In the Kali Yugä men will be without virtues, purity, or a sense of decency, and will know great hardship. [Vishnu Purânä 6. 1]
According to the Lingä Purânä:
During the period of twilight that ends the Yugä, the dispenser of justice will come and kill the wicked people. He will be born of the moon's dynasty. His name is War (Samiti). He will wander all over the earth with a great army. He will destroy the Mlecchä (the barbarians of the West) by the thousands. He will destroy the people of low caste who seized regal power and will exterminate the false philosophers, criminals, and people of mixed blood. He will start his campaign in his thirty-second year and will continue for twenty years. He will kill millions of men; the earth will be razed. People will kill each other furiously. At the end, groups of people remaining here and there will murder each other in order to steal from each other. Troubled and confused, they will leave their wives and homes.
They will be without education, laws, shame, love. They will abandon their fields to migrate across the borders of their countries.
They will live on wine, meat, roots, and fruit. They will be clothed in bark, leaves, and animal skins. They will no longer use money.
They will be hungry and sick and will know despair. It is then that some will start to ponder over fundamental values. [Lingä Purânä, chap. 40]
The End of the World
There are three kinds of what we call the "end of the world" (pralayä): the first induced (naïmittikä); the second natural (prâkritä); the third immediate (atyantikä). Induced destruction (which concerns all living beings on earth) takes place at the end of each Kalpä [cycle of the Yugä(s)]. It is called either accidental or induced (naïmittikä).
Natural destruction (prâkritikä) is that which concerns the whole universe. It takes place when the divine dream which is the world ends. Matter, space, and time then cease to exist. It takes place at the end of time (parardhä). [Vishnu Purânä 1.3.1–3]
The third destruction, called immediate (atyantikä), refers to the liberation (mokshä) of the individual for whom the visible world ceases to exist.
Immediate destruction therefore concerns the individual, induced destruction all living species on earth, and natural destruction the end of the universe.
Accidental or Induced Destruction (Naïmittikä Pralayä)
What is called accidental or provoked destruction (of living species) (naïmittikä) takes place at the end of the Manvantarä (the period of a Manu), the cycle of the Yugä(s). Therefore, it concerns the human species. It takes place when the creator can no longer find any remedy apart from a total destruction of the world to put an end to the disastrous and unplanned increase in the number of living beings. [Mahâbhâratä 12.248.13–17]
This destruction will start with an underwater explosion called Vadavâ, the mare, which will take place in the southern ocean.
It will be preceded by a hundred-year drought during which the people who are not robust will perish. Seven explosions of light will dry up all the waters. The seas, the rivers, the mountain streams, and the underground springs will be drained.
Twelve suns will cause the seas to evaporate. Fed by this water, seven suns will form which will reduce the three worlds to ashes; the earth will become hard like a turtle's shell.
A fire from the mouth of an underground serpent will burn the lower worlds, then the surface of the earth, and will set the atmosphere ablaze. This mass of fire will burn with a great noise. Surrounded by these circles of fire, all animate and inanimate beings will be destroyed.
The destroyer god will breathe enormous clouds, which will make a terrible noise.
A mass of clouds charged with energy, destroyer-of-all (sarvantaka), will appear in the sky like a herd of elephants. [Vishnu Purânä 1.8.18–31]
When the moon is in the constellation of Pushyä (Aquarius), invisible clouds called Pushkarä (cloud of death) and Avartä (cloud without water, nirjalä) will cover the earth. [Shivä Purânä 5.1.48–50]
Some of these clouds will be black, others white like jasmine, others bronzed, others gray like donkeys, others red, others blue like lapis or sapphire, others speckled, orangish, indigo. They will resemble towns or mountains. They will cover all the earth. These immense clouds, making a terrible noise, will darken the sky and will shower the earth in a rain of dust which will extinguish the terrible fire.1
Then, by means of interminable downpour, they will flood the whole earth with water. This torrential rain will swamp the earth for twelve years, and humanity will be destroyed. The whole world will be in darkness. The flood will last seven years. The earth will seem like an immense ocean. [Vishnu Purânä 1. 7. 24–40]
The world where the human species live is formed by four spheres called Bhûr, Bhuvar, Svar, and Mahar. Bhûr is the earth, Bhuvar the atmosphere, Svar the planetary world, and Mahar an extraplanetary world, perhaps the one we attribute these days to the extraterrestrials. Its duration is longer than that of the terrestrial world. It is there that some men will find refuge at the time of the catastrophe that will destroy the entire species at
the end of the Kali Yugä.
When the dissolution of the world seems imminent, some people abandon the earth during the last days of the Kalpä and take refuge in the world of Mahar [the extraplanetary world] and from there will return to the "world of life" (janälokä). [Lingä Purânä 1. 4. 39–40]
These few humans who survive the holocaust will be the progenitors of the future humanity.
Seven humanities must again succeed each other on earth, and, when the Golden Age reappears, seven sages will emerge to again teach the divine law to the few survivors of the four castes. [Shivä Purânä 5.4.40–70]
The Revelation of John presents a vision similar to that of the Purânä(s), the tradition of which was certainly not unknown in his time.
It was only in A.D. 304 that the patriarch Gregory had destroyed, among others, the two Hindu temples built in Armenia during the reign of the monarch Arsacide, in 149 and 127 B.C.
We are approaching the end of the era of the constellation of Pisces. According to the Revelation of John, "the era of Christ will finish with the era of Pisces; then comes Aquarius. " We are entering the age of Aquarius, which involves significant transformations. In the description of John (Revelation 8ff):
The earth starts to tremble.... The stars fall to earth.... A great fiery star falls from the sky.
The sun is darkened by smoke. . . . The day loses a third of its brightness. It hails a mixture of fire and blood. Men are burnt by a great heat and suffer from ulcers. . . . A pain similar to the sting of a scorpion tortures them.
The great men and military leaders take refuge in caves. The merchants, who had become the powerful people on earth, bemoan their destroyed stock. All living beings who were in the sea die.
John also sees "an armor-plated weapon with tails [tanks with canons?] which had a mouth through which they did damage," and says, "The Savior dressed in white then appears on a white horse."
The Disappearance or Natural Death (Prâkritä Pralayä) of the World
The destruction of the world is implied in the very event of the creation and follows a reverse process in the thoughts of the Creator. When the force of expansion (tamas) and that of concentration (sattva) equalize, the tension (rajas), which is the primary cause, the substance (pradhânä) of the universe, ceases to exist and the world dissolves into the imperceptible.
All vestiges of creation are destroyed; Pradhânä and Purushä become idle. The earth, the atmosphere, the planetary and the extraplanetary worlds disappear. Everything that exists is united in one single liquid mass, an ocean of fire in which the world dissolves. It is in this immense cosmic ocean (ekarnavä) that the organizing principle, Brahma, sleeps until, at the end of the night, he awakens and, taking the form of a wild boar, raises a new world out of the waves. [Lingä Purânä 1.4.36–61]
The duration of the universe is expressed by a number having eighteen figures. When the end of time has come, the principle of smell (gandhä tanmâträ) disappears and, with it, solid matter. Everything becomes liquid.
Then the principle of taste (rasa tanmâträ) disappears and with it the liquid element. Everything becomes gaseous. Then the principle of touch (sparshä tanmâträ) disappears and with it the gaseous element. Everything becomes fire. Then the principle of visibility, the rupa tanmâträ (form and light), is obliterated. When visibility disappears, all that remains is the vibration of space, which in its turn fades.
All that remains is space like a void of spherical shape where only the vibratory principle exists. This vibration is reabsorbed in the "Principle of the Elements" (bhûtâdi), that is, the principle of identification or of individuality (ahamkarä). The five elements and the five senses having disappeared, all that remains is the principle of individuality (ahamkarä), which is part of the force of expansion (tamas), which itself dissolves into a great principle (mahat tattvä), which is the principle of consciousness (buddhi).
The plan (purushä), indestructible, omnipresent, which is emanation of Being, returns to its origin. [Vishnu Purâä 1.8, 9]
The game (lîlâ) of the birth and the disappearance of the worlds is an act of power of the Being who is beyond substance (pradhânä) and beyond the plan (purushä), beyond the manifest (vyaktä) and the unmanifest (avyakta), and beyond time (kâlä). The time of the Being has neither beginning nor end. That is why the birth, duration, and disappearance of the worlds never stops.
At the time of the destruction neither day nor night, space nor earth, darkness nor light, nor anything else exists any longer, apart from Being, beyond the perceptions of the senses or thought. [Vishnu Purânä 1.1.18–23]
2
Forestalling the Final Day
The Return to Shaivism
HUMANKIND IS DESTROYED ONLY AFTER IT HAS OUTlived its reason for existence; from the point of view of both carnal and spiritual beings, this occurs when the lineage is debased by racial mixing and when the tradition of occult knowledge can no longer find any receptacle to receive and pass on its heritage.
The extent to which certain men will be able to reverse the tendencies of the modern world, and rediscover ways of life and thought in keeping with their true nature, will determine for how long the final day can be forestalled, or at least allow some groups of individuals to escape the cataclysm and participate in the formation of the future humanity and of the new Golden Age, which should appear after the next flood. Therefore, it is not a pointless exercise for human beings to try to cut themselves off from the modern world and rediscover the values and virtues whose rules and principles have been preserved by esoteric teachings.
According to the gamä(s), the survival, short-or long-lived, of the present humanity depends on a return to the religious, moral, and social values that have been preserved in Shaivism. Its teachings constitute the seed of the Golden Age of the future humankind. Mâhayânä Buddhism, from Tibet, has managed to reincorporate numerous philosophical, ritual, and erotic aspects of Shaivism and has, as it were, reinstated itself in the ancestral tradition. It thus offers an alternative course. On the other hand, during the first centuries after Christ, at the same time that in India we see Vaishnavism, which stemmed from Arihat, once again being substituted for Shaivism, we also see the mystical and liberating Christianity of the Gnostics of the earliest times changing into a dogmatic, moralistic, and puritanical religion no longer bearing any relation to the teachings of Jesus.
The recent reappearance of numerous texts of the Gnosis, which are very close to the ideas of Shaivism, and of gospels that the Church had rejected and declared apocryphal, is a good omen for the future.
The present period shows some signs of a return to Shaiva and Dionysian values, which may herald a reprieve from the brutal end of the Kali Yugä. One of the most important phenomena of the present era is the reestablishment of a cohesion between scientific research and cosmological speculation, an effort to understand the nature of the world which shows a continuity between physics, metaphysics, and eventually spirituality, in contrast with the dogmatism of the religions coming from Arihat.
The "new alliance" of philosophy and science may lead us back to Dionysian wisdom.... Today, we again encounter a multitude of erotic practices that may be signaling what could be a resurgence of the Dionysian mystery.
Often the liberation from convention has been the guarantee of a great cultural development.... The myth of bisexuality is one way of expressing the divine totality (cosmic, societal)....
It is this mythical and primordial androgyny that sociologists can detect in many of the behavioral patterns of today's youth. [Michael Maffesoli, L'Ombre de Dionysos, pp. 29, 40, 129, and 187]
The end of the Kali Yugä is a particularly favorable period to pursue true knowledge.
Some will attain wisdom in a short time, for the merits acquired in one year during the Tretâ Yugä can be obtained in one day in the age of Kali. [Shivä Purânä 5. 1.40]
At the end of the Kali Yugä, the god Shiva will appear to reestablish the right path in a secret and h
idden form. [Lingä Purânä 1.40.12]
3
Conclusions
SOME CONTEMPORARY ASTROPHYSICISTS AND BIOLOgists, in the course of their most audacious speculations, are beginning to become aware of a strict coexistence and interdependence between consciousness and matter. There exists no matter without consciousness and no consciousness without matter. One of the fundamental conceptions of Shaiva philosophy is that each form of existence, animated or inert, each living species, has a role to fulfill in the play of creation and that this determines its physical appearance and the development of its mental capacities at its level of consciousness.
The tendency in the highest spheres of contemporary thought to propose hypotheses that resemble aspects of the knowledge of the Golden Age of humanity at the very moment when all the premonitory signs of its decline and death are manifesting is significant. Is it a question of a culmination, of a final attempt to avoid the catastrophe, or simply a precursory sign of the humanity that must succeed our own? The question remains open.
The level of knowledge proper to each of the species is the key to its reason for being. Physical and mental characteristics are inseparable in the plan of creation. The development of our brain is not a result of chance. It is the instrument of a perception of the world that varies according to genetic group, and each group plays a different witnessing role, such that a hunting dog has aptitudes different from those of a sheep dog. In the immense display represented by the multitude of the forms of life, the development of intelligence has as its goal the perception of a particular aspect of creation. It is sufficient, in certain cases, that rare individuals or even a single individual reaches a certain level of knowledge such that the Creator can contemplate his work through the beings that He has created, not at all in his image, but as mirrors in which he contemplates himself. The mastery of the secrets that permit the destruction of the atom and the manipulation of genes causes the species "man" to draw near to Purushä, Universal Man, the computer of the created. Men encroach upon the domain of the gods, and the yogic texts warn us of this transgression beyond the domain which is allowed us. "The gods do not like men to reach knowledge," say the Upanishad(s).
While the Gods Play Page 20
