Why some believe this is Kali Yuga?
Due to some past mistakes in the almanacs, the present yuga is recorded as Kali Yuga. Sri Yukteswar explains how this mistake occurred earlier.
After Mahabharata war, Pandavas (Dharmaraja and his four brothers) along with other wise men retired to Himalayas. Dharmaraja’s grand son Raja Parikshit took the throne. No one in his court has the understanding of the Yugas.
First mistake: When the dwapara ended after 2400 years in 701 BC, no one dared to change to Kali Yuga due to lack of understanding. Dwapara Yuga continued even though it actually ended.
Second mistake: In between some one changed the Yuga to Kali Yuga and started counting the years from the previouis Dwapara. So AD 499 became Kali Yuga 3600 (this included Dwapara 2400 + Kaliyuga 1200)
Third mistake: After AD 499, with the start of Ascending Kali Yuga, intellectual understanding started to develop. So some wise men of the time understood that there was some mistake in this calculation. However their understanding did not develop to the extent of correcting the mistake. So instead of correcting the mistake, they assumed that the ancestors must be right in continuing Kali Yuga and tried to fit the numbers into this argument. They fancied that though kali Yuga is supposed to have only 1200 years, these years are not ordinary years, they are daiva (divine, or age of Gods) years consisting of 12 daiva months of 30 daiva days each, with each day equal to one earth year.
So 1200 years of Kali Yuga counted as Daiva years = 1200 x 12 x 30 earth years = 432000 years
According to this wrong calculation, we have completed 5110 years (in 2010) of Kali Yuga and still 432000 – 5110 = 426890 years of Kali Yuga left! In Swami Yukteswar’s words, a dark prospect, fortunately not true!
How Sri Yukteswar concluded that this is Dwapara Yuga?
Apart from taking references from Manu-Samhita about Yugas and analyzing how the mistakes happened in calculating Yuga time wrongly, Sri Yukteswar also observed the planet position and did astronomical calculations.
Since Yugas are defined based on Sun’s movement, he calculated the years passed from
the start of previous Kaliyuga based on the planetory position. From this he concluded that we are into 194 years of Dwapara when he had written the book The Holy Science (that was in 1894).
Final Word
Concluding with Sri Yukteswar’s words from The Holy Science:
So far as the magnetic properties are concerned, the grasping power of the human intellect is at present so limited that it would be quite useless to attempt to make the matter understood by the general public. The intellect of the man in Treta Yuga (Year 4099 AD) will comprehend the attributes of divine magnetism. There are indeed exceptional personages now living who, having overcome the influence of Time, can grasp today what ordinary people cannot grasp; but this book is not for those exalted ones, who require nothing of it.
Related Pages:
http://www.minsobooks.com/the-holy-science-home.html About the Holy Science
http://www.minsobooks.com/read-extracts-from-the-holy-science.html Read extracts from The Holy Science
http://www.minsobooks.com/quotes-of-swami-sri-yukteswar.html Sri Yukteswar Quotes
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