June 22, 2026
sahasrayugaparyantam ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ
rātriṁ yugasahasrāntāṁ te ’horātravido janāḥ (VIII-17)
avyaktād vyaktayaḥ sarvāḥ prabhavanty aharāgame
rātryāgame pralīyante tatrai ’vā ’vyaktasaṁjñake (VIII-18)
VIII/17. Those people who know the day of Brahmā (the creator)
which is of a duration of a thousand ages, and the night which is
also of a thousand ages’ duration, they know the real meaning
of night and day.
VIII/18. From the un-manifested, all the manifested worlds proceed
at the coming of the ‘day’; at the coming of the ‘night’ they dissolve
verily into that alone which is called the un-manifested.
Swamiji's Commentary
Indian astronomers and sages of intuitive wisdom have calculated that a mahāyuga (age) is of the duration of 4,320,000 years according to the earth calendar. A thousand of these constitutes the creator’s ‘day-time’ – the period during which the manifest world ‘exists’. After this there is an equal duration of the ‘night’ of the creator. I believe the latest scientific discovery is that just as once everything emerged from God, later, everything will collapse into itself – first there was an explosion, and later there will be an implosion where everything will be sucked into its own centre. The entire universe will be reduced to a pin-point called a ‘singularity’. What is wrong with calling this Brahman, God?
Though here and there in our scriptures there is a description of ‘creation’, such descriptions are quickly followed by a statement that it is a repetitive process. At the beginning of creation, the creator re-creates what was during the previous ‘day of the creator’. No one can ever visualize a ‘creation from nothing’, for then we should foolishly accept the idea that this manifest universe has existed only for a brief while and before that, from beginning-less time, there was nothing! It is a cycle, with its projection and reabsorption; beginning-less and endless (though he who is awake to Self-knowledge is not caught in this relentlessly turning wheel). Many scientists and astronomers today seem to agree with this view of an ever-existing universe, condensing and expanding.
Meditation on the magnitude of the universe will save you from the worries of the moment. The words and the concepts of ‘time’, ‘night’ and ‘day’ are relative and illusory. Realizing this, all fear falls away from you.