IIPM Review MBA 2012
Is this the end or a new beginning? Making sense of all the wild doomsday prophecies that are swirling around us. A TSI Exclusive
Is doomsday knocking on our doors? Well, it depends on how sturdy our doors are. Many centuries ago, a Mayan calendar ‘predicted’ the end of the world in 2012. For those with a rational bent of mind, this would be a whole load of hoary gobbledygook. But there might be large swathes of people out there who believe that before this year ends, the world that we know will be gone.
Though there is no credible evidence to support this long-standing prognostication, a fascination with apocalyptic horror tales is ingrained deep down in the collective human consciousness. And we aren’t just talking climate change, runaway pollution, depletion of natural resources and a nuclear holocaust, which are real threats to the well-being of the universe.
There is something beyond these explainable phenomena that troubles our thoughts. Just the other night, many village folk in parts of north India stayed up till sunrise because they feared they would turn into stone if they went to sleep. Yes, that is how ridiculous it can get in a country where Faith is almost always an eyeless, if not feckless, entity.
History is replete with stories of mass destruction and natural calamities, and mythology from around the world abounds in tales of devastating celestial events.
Over the centuries, prophets and sages have narrated chilling tales of an unseen power that could one day, in the wink of an eye, strike everything out of existence. Just like that, in a jiffy. Imagine fire and brimstone raining from the sky and reducing the world to cinders or flash floods flattening the Earth we inhabit into a mangled, unrecognisable splotch. Such imagined cataclysms make for great stories.
But that apart, the concept of the “End” – in other words, Judgment Day – is an integral part of the world’s great religions. Some have prophesied a complete annihilation of the world with no trace of life surviving in its aftermath, while others have ordained that the end of one age will be followed by the beginning of another.
Some give us hope by predicting the resurrection of Messiahs, while others deprive us of little mercies by providing the gory blow-by-blow details of the hours of destruction. Doomsday of some kind or the other is a distinct concept in every religion, be it Christianity, Islam or Hinduism, which explains why it has such instant acceptability.
The calendar of the ancient Mayan civilization, which originated in 2600 BC in Yucatan and reached its zenith around 250 AD in what is today Mexico, Guatemala, western Honduras, El Salvador and northern Belize, comes to an abrupt, unexplained halt on December 21, 2012. And that date is perceived by fear-mongers as a sign that thereafter there will be nothing left of the world that we live in.
Take that with a fistful of salt. “Doomsday is a typical Western concept,” says tarot card reader Sonal Varma. “The Earth is said to have a life span of four billion years. Humanity will not be wiped out in a day. The depletion of the Earth’s resources is only a gradual process. And it is a process that could well be reversed.”
Astrologer Pawan Sinha explains that some of the Mayan calendar predictions – for example, the New Orleans deluge and the Indian Ocean tsunami – have come true. “So some people tend to believe that its doomsday inference might not be off the mark either,” he adds.
He points out that once every 89 years, the Sun undergoes a change, which affects human beings and flora and fauna. “The year 2012 marks the beginning of the next cycle of 89 years,” he says. “So we might see some changes, but they will happen gradually. After all, doomsday doesn’t come in a day.”
According to Hindu beliefs, time revolves in "yugas" or ages. The universe was created in the "Satya yuga" and its destruction will be brought about by Lord Shiva at the end of the "Kali yuga" and after Kalki, the tenth "avtaar" or incarnation of Lord Vishnu, has appeared to cleanse mankind of its sins.
In Islam, the Day of Judgment or "Yawm ad-Din", meaning the day when the Almighty will assess all human beings, is a crucial concept.
According to documented texts, the Day of Judgment is preceded by the end of the world which would not come until the appearance of some distinct signs, including smoke, Dajjal or anti-Christ, the rising of the sun in the west, the emergence of Gog and Magog, and three huge earthquakes. However, according to Islamic belief, there is no definite timeline for the destruction to take place; only Allah knows when that would happen.
In Christianity, the second coming of Jesus Christ is the chief phenomenon. According to the Book of Revelation, death and suffering will continue to exist until Christ has returned. Most scholars of Christianity see Revelation in reference to events which have not come to pass as yet, but which will come to pass at the end of the age, and the end of the world.
Chennai-based astro-occult scientist Vikravandi V Ravichandran has a question: “The Mayan civilization itself exists no more. Did they ever predict their own extinction? If they knew when the world would end, wouldn’t they have also known about the demise of their own civilisation?”
Ravichandran also cites previous doomsday predictions, including the one made by Nostradamus in the 16th century, which turned out to be hoaxes.
“(American psychic) Jeron Criswell (he died in 1982) had predicted that the world would end in 1999 as a result of a disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field. It never came to pass. In the 18th century, a British nun had predicted that earthquakes and wars would be apocalyptic and the world would be destroyed by 2000 AD,” he says.
The world does face many threats to its continued existence, but doomsday, as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar stresses (see interview), happens only in Hollywood blockbusters.
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