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Updated: June 7, 2025
'All beings at the end of a Kalpa return into my Nature, and again at the beginning of a Kalpa do I send them forth. Gi. Gi. This last passage means the womb of the world is the great Brahman, i.e. non- intelligent matter in its subtle state, commonly called Prakriti; with this I connect the embryo, i.e. the intelligent principle.
Like as in the first days of the kalpa, Rishi-kings by the way in which they walked, practising pure and spotless deeds, offered up religious offerings, without harm to living thing, and illustriously prepared an excellent karma, so the king excelling in the excellence of purity in family and excellence of wealth, excelling in strength and every exhibition of prowess, reflected the glory of his name through the world, as the sun sheds abroad his thousand rays.
"This," says Eitel, "is a designation for a Kalpa of stability, so-called because one thousand Buddhas appear in the course of it. Our present period is a Bhadra-kalpa, and four Buddhas have already appeared. The name Mara is explained by "the murderer," "the destroyer of virtue," and similar appellations.
When a living creature realises this unity in consequence of true knowledge, he is then said to attain to Brahma. The period of time for which one creation exists or for which it ceases to exist is called a Kalpa. Living creatures exist for a thousand millions of such Kalpas. Immobile creatures also exist for an equal period.
The texts which speak of Brahman as being one only without a second are explained as referring to the state of pralaya or absorption which occurs at the end of each Kalpa. At the conclusion of the period of pralaya he re-emits the world and individual souls by an act of volition and the souls begin the round of transmigration.
The kalpa or great year of the Brahmans is so long that were a cube of granite a hundred yards each way brushed once in a century by a soft cloth, it would be quite worn to dust before the kalpa would close: or, as some Christians believe, there may be but six thousand years, six days of God in whose sight “a thousand years are as one day,” between the creation and the cremation of the world, from when it rose from the waters until it shall be consumed by the fire.
And the Ocean himself brought in a sling that big conch of Varuna which the celestial artificer Viswakarman had constructed with a thousand Nishkas of gold, and which Prajapati had in a former Kalpa, presented unto Indra. It was with that conch that Krishna bathed Yudhishthira after the conclusion of the sacrifice, and beholding it, I swooned away.
Thus we have the 'Wishing Tree' of the Hindoos, the Kalpa Vriksha of Somadeva, and of the German Fairy Tales in the 'Pumpkin Tree', which throws down as many pumpkins as the poor widow wishes. In one story we have 'Boots' to the life, while the man whom he outwits is own brother to the Norse Trolls.
From Brahman spring all creatures mobile and immobile. Know that Creation springs in this way repeatedly at the beginning of every Kalpa. Creation and destruction succeed each other even as sunrise and sunset in this world.
He wished to keep this whole continually before the mind, but in attempting to describe it he fell into that besetting intellectual sin of India, the systematizing of the imaginary. Ages, continents and worlds are described in detailed statements which bear no relation to facts. Thus, Brahmanic cosmogony usually deals with a period of time called Kalpa.
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