Vivane, you are right—things that happen repeatedly is not prediction.
In the West the word
prediction is often used. But in Bagavatam
it is all about repeated elevation and entropy (hence it is not about prediction).
It says history repeats itself identically in every Kalpa (cycle of a few thousand years):
First half of the Kalpa (is like Day) passes through stages
such as GOLDEN AGE (Satya Yuga) when
people are quite divine in nature and SILVER AGE (Treta Yuga) when they are more or less divine in nature. Second
half of the Kalpa (is like Night) passes
through stages such as COPPER AGE (Dwapar
Yuga) when people start becoming egoistic and IRON AGE (Kali Yuga) when people become too
egoistic. In Kali Yuga even religions
display intoxication towards their own identity (collective ego) and compete
with each other for supremacy, forgetting their original role of reconnecting
people with God. When irreligiousness reaches its climax, the Supreme Soul
(whom even Krishna calls, the Supreme Father), God Shiva, makes His
promised descent on to this earth (Gita 4:7), chooses a worthy person, names
him Brahma (Great Mind) according to
his character, through him, He teaches and trains the willing people for the
Golden Age and re-establishes Heaven on earth. This short period is the most
auspicious part of a Kalpa (because
God Himself is the real Hero of this period and His training makes people like
diamond in their integrity and purity) and is called DIAMOND AGE (quality-wise).
Thus we have five Yugas which
explains why the Silver Age is called Treta
(which means third, in Sanskrit) Yuga. As the time passes by, entropy
sets in—quality of people declines and Heavenly world gradually becomes Hell! And
again God’s role begins, and the Time Cycle repeats. Thus human history is
compared to a Kalpa tree, because the
tree is an apt symbol of growth and decay followed by the intervention of a
seed which ensures the sprouting and growing again! Thus humanity is like an
inverted tree (Gita 15:1-2) and God is like “the Supreme Seed” of humanity (Gita
14:3, 4; 9:10) who ensures the sprouting each time
the world decays!
However, history of first
half of the Kalpa is unlikely to be
faithfully kept by the second half Kalpa residents
whose inclination is not very much towards truth. Another problem is that each Kalpa ends with a nuclear catastrophe
which makes things complicated and difficult for the future researchers who
want to know the details of the previous Kalpa!
Situation is almost like trying to discern the contents of a book that has now
been reduced to ashes by fire! Yet there are indirect proof for the cycle of
elevation and entropy. November 2014 issue of Geophysical Journal International had
even this headline: “Earth's Magnetic
Field Could Flip Within A Human Lifetime.” In other words, what they
indirectly say is that earth has a LINEAR history of Billions of years whereas
its magnetic field has a CYCLIC history of a few thousand years which requires a
very large supply of energy to keep it going [which obviously points to a
Supreme Soul, or “the Ruler of the universe”—Gita 10:3]
If
the earth’s magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster than scientists originally
thought, it means cyclic history of the present magnetic field is nearing its
end! No wonder Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its iconic Doomsday Clock up
2 minutes on 23.01.2015 which means we are just three minutes closer to
midnight in comparison to 17 minutes to midnight in 1991. Experts
substantiate this, pointing to the undeniable threat to the continued existence
of humanity arising from insufficient action by the Governments on issues such
as nuclear arms, unchecked climate change… etc. (http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/23/us/feat-doomsday-clock-three-minutes-midnight/index.html).
Also, the way terrorism flourishes
in spite of all-out fighting against it by nearly all Governments of the world shows
we are heading for a global catastrophe!
Interestingly, the Vishnu Purana (4:24) rightly predicted some more characteristics for our time: “Social status
depends not upon your accomplishments, but in the ownership of property; wealth
is now the source of virtue; passion and luxury are the sole bonds between
spouses; falsity and lying are the conditions of success in life; sexuality is
the sole source of human enjoyment; religion, a superficial and empty ritual, is
confused with spirituality.” The same is elaborated in Shrimad Bhagavatam as shown in the post and also in Bible, Quran …
etc.
Yet,
as usual this seeming dead-end is actually going to be the beginning of another
Age! Change-over from a catastrophic end of the Iron Age to a Golden Age will
take place orderly under the supervision of the Supreme Soul, God Shiva whose
very name means THE SUPREME WORLD BENEFACTOR. He takes all souls (not the
bodily beings, but their souls) to Paramdham,
the soul world, and recreates Heaven on earth into which souls will descend number-wise
(merit-wise), in a systematic process by which all souls would have reached
here on earth towards the end of next Kali
Yuga—each one according to his merit and according to his time. In fact,
the only role God plays is this: Recreating the Heaven on earth whenever humans
transform it into a Hell. (Gita 4:7) Hence He is aptly symbolized in Lingam, made of parts of two Sanskrit words
lin + gam indicative of Dissolution (laya) and
Recreation (agaman) respectively (Gita 7:6;
10:34), which is a symbol that is found all over the world, even in (Etruscan
Museum) Vatican (which is originally a Sanskrit word vatica, meaning religious center). Photos from multiple locations are
displayed in http://www.stephen-knapp.com/art_photo_fourteen.htm. Thus Shiva Linga is a symbol of cyclic history
in nutshell.
Collective memory!
If there was a
Golden Age that once existed here on earth, then it would not easily be
forgotten. No wonder, virtually all cultures and religions of the world point
to a Golden Age and to a Great Fall that mankind experienced from it. The most
prominent of them all is the Bible which is made of 66 small books. Its first
book (Genesis) speaks of how the Paradise
on earth was lost (when humans began to think in terms of me and mine), and its
last book (Revelation) shows how it
will be restored on earth (when people revert to purity through oneness with
God’s qualities)!
Existence of Deism
There were many shrewd
people (in the history of the world) who firmly believed in the existence of a
loving God, yet declared He has not started any religion on earth! These people
are called Deists (who are different from Theists who are mostly associated
with religions). Some of the famous Deists are: Albert Einstein, Alfred
M. Mayer, Antony
Flew, Alexander
Pope, Adam
Smith, Ahmad
Kasravi, Benjamin
Franklin, Brett
Gurewitz, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Charles Lyell, Charles Sanders Peirce, Colin
Maclaurin, Dmitri
Mendeleev, Ethan
Allen, Edward Herbert, 1st Baron
Herbert of Cherbury, Elihu
Palmer, Émilie du Châtelet, Ernest
Rutherford, Frederick the Great, Friedrich Schiller, Gottfried
Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, George
Washington, Harish-Chandra, Harmony
Korine, Henrik
Wergeland, Hermann
Weyl, Humphry
Davy James
Heckman, James
Hutton, James
Madison, James
Watt, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Jean le Rond D’Alembert, John Muir, John Toland, John Locke, José
Rizal, Jules
Verne, Ludwig
Boltzmann, Luis Walter Alvarez, Lysander
Spooner, Mark
Twain, Martin
Gardner, Matthew
Tindal, Max
Born, Max
Planck, Maximilien Robespierre, Mikhail
Lomonosov, Moses
Mendelssohn, Napoleon Bonaparte, Neil
Armstrong, Nick
Cave, Paul
Davies, Robert
Hooke, Simon
Newcomb, Thomas Alva Edison, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas
Paine, Victor
Hugo, Voltaire, Walter
Kohn, Wernher
von Braun, William Lloyd Garrison, William
Hogarth, Wolfgang
Pauli …. etc. (http://www.deism.com/einstein.htm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deists). The resounding thinking of these great people
passes the stage of drama (as though a King’s pilot vehicles) before God makes His promised descent on earth, disowning all the religions. Thus existence
of these well-informed great people is an indirect proof to what God Himself says
in Bhagavatam: ‘His role begins only
in the fag end of Kali Yuga, (not
before that).
