The second creation of the universe, the flow of time, and the infallibility of the Vedas
There was a previous iteration of the universe that existed for about 155 trillion years, but this universe doesn’t exist anymore. It was completely destroyed. What happened?
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In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krsna mentions that each day of Brahma corresponds to 4.32 billion years of our time, and the same goes for his night. Brahma already lived for 50 of such years; therefore, by making a simple calculation (4,320,000,000 x 360 x 50), we can estimate the age of our universe as a little over 155 trillion years. Right? Well, it’s a little complicated.
Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.11.34, as well as other references, mention that the life of Brahma is divided into two parārdhas, each corresponding to 50 years of his life. What is more interesting, however, is that the Vāyu Purāṇa (2.38.240) mentions that all the constituents of the universe last for a single parārdha, and at the end of this period they are completely dissolved. How is Brahmā supposed to live for 100 years of his time if the universe is destroyed after the first 50 years?
It becomes even more puzzling when we are informed that, according to the scriptures, we are living on the first day of the 51st year of Brahmā. In other words, this annihilation of the universe that happens at the end of his first 50 years is not something theoretical, that is supposed to take place in a distant future, but something that already happened and shaped the universe we live in.
There was a previous iteration of the universe that existed for about 155 trillion years, but this universe doesn’t exist anymore. It was completely destroyed, down to the elemental particles, at the end of the previous day of Brahmā. The universe we see now, when we look at the sky, was created fresh, relatively recently in the universal scale of time.
This idea is reinforced in several passages of the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, where we get the idea that the universe was empty when Brahmā awoke at the beginning of the current day. Normally, when Brahmā goes to sleep, there is a partial devastation that consumes only the lower half of the universe, up to Svargaloka, while all the sages who live in Janaloka and upwards remain alive during the night of Brahmā. In this way, when Lord Brahmā awakens, all the upper planetary systems are intact, and the universe is already inhabited by a huge population. Only the lower and intermediate planetary systems have to be recreated.
In Brahmā’s current day, however, there was nothing when he awoke, and he had to create all planetary systems from scratch, as described in the Second Canto of Śrīmad Bhāgavatam.
In this way, although Brahma is over 155 trillion years old, the present iteration of the universe was created quite recently, just a few billion years ago.
There is, however, yet another factor we need to consider when we want to calculate the precise age of the universe, which is the factor of two of Sridhara Swami. This comes from the work of Madhavendra Puri Prabhu and Siddharth Chabra, published in the book The Big Bang and The Sages. In their research, they discovered a commentary by Sridhara Swami (the original commentator of Śrīmad Bhāgavatam) on Vishnu Purana (1.3.7), which led to the conclusion that a day in Bhu-Mandala equals two days of our time. In other words, according to it, time goes faster for us than for the rest of Bhu-mandala.
It makes sense when we take into account that in the current age, we are not exactly at the same level of reality as the rest of Bhu-Mandala (if we were, we would be able to observe the rest of the structure, which we obviously can’t). We are in some kind of lower reality during Kali-yuga, and thus it makes perfect sense that time runs faster for us, since this is what happens in all lower planetary systems. Time in hell, for example, goes extraordinarily fast, with one day corresponding to 100 years in Bhu-Mandala.
This is a very important discovery, because all the dates given in the Purāṇas are given in accordance with the time in Bhu-Mandala, but time in other parts of the cosmos goes at different rates. One year on Bhu-Mandala corresponds to just one day in Svargaloka, 0.0002 seconds in Brahmaloka, and 36,000 years in hell.
Historically, Purāṇic scholars believed that time on our planet flows at the same rate as time in Bhu-Mandala, but the discovery that time here actually goes faster has several implications.
The first implication is that since two years here equals one year in Bhu-Mandala, we need to multiply all the cosmic dates given in the Puranas by two to get the actual dates of events according to the time on our planet, which we need to connect events described in the Puranas with events studied in modern science.
The date of the creation of the solar system given in the Puranas is thus 4.562 billion earthly years ago (2.281 billion years since the beginning of the day of Brahma x 2), and the date for the great mass extinction at the end of the reign of the last Manu began 251.15 million earthly years ago (107.575 million x 2). These numbers almost exactly match the 4.567 billion years for the creation of the solar system and 251.9 million years (for the Permian–Triassic extinction) given by modern studies. Coincidence?
When we take these two ideas into account, we can calculate that a complete devastation happened at the end of the previous day of Brahmā. After this event, there were 8.64 billion years (4.32 billion x 2) of the night of Brahma. After this, there were 616 million years of the Manvantara Sandhya (308 million x 2), plus 4.562 billion years (2.281 x 2) since the creation of our solar system. This brings the total since the total annihilation to 13.819 billion years of time on our planet.
It happens that the most widespread estimation of the date of the beginning of the universe in scientific circles is 13.801 billion years ago. Again, both numbers are quite close. We thus have three values that are quite close between the Vedas and modern astronomy:
The creation of the solar system:
4.562 billion years (Vedas)
4.567 billion years (modern astronomy)
The last great mass extinction:
251.15 million earthly years (Vedas, at the end of the reign of the last Manu)
251.9 million years (modern paleontology, the Permian–Triassic extinction)
The total age of the universe:
13.819 billion years (Vedas)
13.801 billion years (modern astronomy)
Could it all be a coincidence? It’s quite improbable. It’s also important to take into account that these numbers were discovered by modern astronomers and paleontologists only recently. How they could be given in the 5,000+ years old Vedas is a question they still need to answer.
This shows once more that the knowledge given in the Vedas is correct, but we may not get the correct numbers when we don’t understand all the details.
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