Pralaya (Sanskrit) [from
pra away + the verbal root
li to dissolve] Dissolving away, death, dissolution, as when one pours water upon a cube of salt or sugar: the cube of salt or sugar vanishes in the water, dissolves, and changes its form. So during a pralaya, matter crumbles or vanishes away into something else which is yet in it, surrounds it, and interpenetrates it. Pralaya is often defined as the state of latency or rest between two manvantaras of great life cycles. During pralaya, everything differentiated, every unit, disappears from the phenomenal universe and is transferred into the noumenal essence which periodically throughout eternity gives birth to all the phenomena of nature. Pralaya is dissolution of the visible into the invisible, the heterogeneous into the homogeneous, relatively or absolutely -- the objective universe returns into its one primal and eternally productive Cause, to reappear at the following cosmic dawn. To our finite minds, pralaya is like a state of nonbeing -- and so it is for all existences and beings on the lower material planes.
A mahapralaya (great pralaya) is an absolute pralaya of a solar system or kosmos; a minor pralaya is a partial dissolution of some part of the solar system or cosmos, such as a planetary chain or a globe. After an absolute pralaya, when the preexisting manifested material consists of but one element, and breath "is everywhere," the creation process acts from without inwardly;
to be continue "
Pralaya2 "
