Mysteries of the Sacred Universe 2
In this second part of the Mysteries of the Sacred Universe (2000) interview, Thompson and radio show host Bob Hieronimus discuss the works of various authors such as the historian and philosopher of science from MIT, Giorgio de Santilana, who published Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time (1969); the controversial geometrical evaluations of the Egyptian pyramids proposed by Livio Stecchini and René Schwaller de Lubicz; the Soviet-born American author Zacharia Sitchin’s speculative analyses about ancient astronauts; as well as the architectural features of Angkor Wat and comparable anthropological evidence that invites inquiry about the complexity of ancient civilization.
TRANSCRIPT: Sacred Universe 2; Hieronimus Interview: 21st Century Radio – March 28, 2001 / (324)
Bob Hieronymus: Tonight we're gonna probe an area called the universe... that's right. That's right, but it's not only a universe, it's a sacred universe. How do you like that? And we're not only gonna talk about a sacred universe, but Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. Now that's where my knees begin to buckle, because I love mysteries. So when I see a book with the title, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe: The Cosmology of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, I can't help but want to know more about it.
And joining us to review that very book, just by chance, if you can believe in that, is it's author. Who else? Who else would be better to review the book than the person who wrote it? That seems reasonable, doesn't it? And that's Dr. Richard L. Thompson, who first joined us about six years ago to review his landmark work, Alien Identities.
Richard L Thompson was born in Binghamton, New York in 1947, and in 1974 he received his PhD in mathematics from Cornell University where he specialized in probability theory and statistical mechanics. He was one of those mechanics that ran around and fixed all the statisticals.
Now Dr. Thompson has done scientific research in quantum physics, mathematical biology, and remote sensing. He has extensively investigated ancient Indian astronomy, cosmology, and spirituality and has developed multimedia expositions on these topics. He is the author of six books on subjects ranging from consciousness to archeology and ancient astronomy. Welcome back to 21st Century Radio, Dr. Richard L. Thompson.
Richard L Thompson: Well thank you.
BH: How have you been Richard?
RLT: I'm doing fine.
BH: You have any snow?
RLT: Not down here.
BH: Not down there.
RLT: I'm down here in Florida.
BH: Well it serves you right. Somehow I guess karmically you were attracted to the right place at the right time, huh?
RLT: Yeah.
BH: Well Richard, you and I have talked about this important work recently and I gotta return to the cover of the book. You probably know every square millimeter of the cover of this book don't ya?
RLT: Oh yeah.
BH: I mean, 'cause you designed this cover I would imagine huh?
RLT: Yep.
BH: And it has a purpose. It's not just to look pretty.
RLT: That's true.
BH: Now the first time I saw this I thought to myself, what's going on here? This looks like someone took a cone and stuck it in a pizza and... but I was very... I was very much concerned as to what the meaning of these things were, ‘cause I knew they were meaningful, especially the very top. Now, last time we talked we did it in a totally different way, from an analytic way. But I would love to approach tonight's discussion from the perspective of symbols and myths in regards to this particular symbol. Would you mind?
RLT: No, not at all.
BH: So, what are we looking at when we take a look at the cover of your book, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe.
RLT: Well, what you're looking at there is a scale model of something called Jambūdvīpa, which is described in the Indian Sanskrit literature known as the Purāṇas. In particular, in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which is the main topic of this particular book. So what you have there, the... it's a... as you describe, it's like a disk with an inverted cone coming up through the center of it. And on that disk you'll see a series of mountain ranges dividing it up into a series of strips.
So basically that is a stylized model of the earth. But it should not be taken literally as a statement that: Well, this is really what the earth is like. First of all, it's a flat disk. It has several different levels of interpretation which refer to the earth and regions on the surface of the earth. And it's part of a larger disk. You'll see surrounding it there, that blue ring. That's an ocean. Beyond that, there would be another ring of land, and alternating rings of land and ocean going out to a very great distance.
[5:30]
So the whole thing is called, in Sanskrit, Bhū-maṇḍala which means earth-disk, literally. So the... at first glance this seems to be a very strange way of describing the earth. It's described as a very large disk divided into a series of concentric rings, which are called islands and oceans. And in the center there's a circular disk which is what you see on the cover of the book. And then in the very center of that, there's this inverted cone which is called Mount Meru. So that's literally what you're dealing with. But we could go on at some length talking about what it all means.
BH: Yes indeed, we need to because when we look inside that, it's kind of like there's a square around the inverted cone. And inside the square, it appears to me, and... or I remember reading, there are other structures, other smaller mountains and water. ‘cause this circular disk which I used to think, years ago when I first started... when I saw some of these maps I thought: Well you know, it doesn't look like any map of the earth that I've ever seen, you know. And you explain later on of course that this is not exactly what that is at all.
We'll return with our guest, Dr. Richard Thompson, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, Govardhan Hill Publishing, www.sacreduniverse.com. To order, call 904-462-0466.
I'm Dr. Bob Hieronymus, which doesn't amount to very much. But you know who does amount to a lot as far as we're concerned, Dr. Richard Thompson, because he wrote the book, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, Govardhan Hill Publishing, www.sacreduniverse.com. Please visit their website. And you can order this book by calling 904-462-0466.
And when you do, when you see the cover, I'll wager you're gonna respond somewhere along the lines that I would think most humans would respond, as being very curious as to what's on it's cover. Because as explained by Dr. Thompson, this is a model which describes the universe, our Solar System, our planet's geography, and perhaps even... maybe even some parts of India. Is that correct sir?
RLT: Yes. The basic format of this cosmological description is that it has multiple levels of meaning. So basically, one model is used to represent a number of different ideas, or a number of different concepts of the universe. So...
BH: My goodness, this is like a unified theory esoterica.
RLT: Well, what we're accustomed to nowadays is that if you have a theoretical model, then each element in the model should correspond to one element of reality and vice versa. So it's a one-to-one map between the model and the reality that you're describing.
But in ancient times or even fairly recently... even if you go back, say, to the Middle Ages, you'll find that people often would represent several different things with a given model. And that's what we see here also.
BH: Um-hum. Now how... When you say it represents the universe, what is the universe?
RLT: Well, the universe that we're talking about here, in terms of modern astronomy, is really the Solar System and the earth within the Solar System. Looking at it in that way, you'll see that the cosmology of the Bhāgavatam gives a very detailed and realistic description of the universe. It's not telling us about galaxies and quasars and things of that nature. But considering it as the Solar System, that's the universe as described in this text.
[10:23]
I should note that until very recently, that's what people meant by the universe. If you go back to Europe, say as recently as the Renaissance period, you'll find that the universe was represented by showing the earth with the planetary orbits surrounding it, and finally, surrounding that, the shell of the fixed stars. And then beyond that would be the Empyrean Realm, the Kingdom of God. So there again, the universe, namely the region within the shell, was really a representation of the Solar System.
BH: But would you mind if we could do a little analysis of some of the symbolic elements we have in this particular structure which seems to be, as you just noted, our universe or Solar System? And the geography of our planet, the... the large cone... inverted cone there – what is that?
RLT: Well, the inverted cone is called Mount Meru, and basically that refers to the cosmic axis. So if you look at the universe from the point of view of the earth as stationary, then you'll see that the entire sky, the heavens, rotates once per day around a certain fixed point. So looking at it in that way, this axis of rotation is very significant. That's been demoted in significance with the development of the Copernican theory of the planets.
BH: We'll return to the axis and Dr. Richard Thompson in just a few minutes here on 21st Century Radio.
Our guest is Dr. Richard Thompson. The book we are glancing at this evening is Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, Govardhan Hill Publishing, www.sacreduniverse.com. And we suggest you order a copy of it by calling 904-462-0466.
I'll tell you where we really need books like this. We need them in libraries. We need them in public libraries. Now we've been studying the front cover and we were especially focusing, this time... on the cone, inverted cone, or axis. You refer to it as the axis of the earth. Is the... how is the axis here related to the pole star?
RLT: Well the... at the present time the axis lines up with the pole star. So that is the... then the cosmic spin axis. In Sanskrit the rotation of the heavens around that axis, centered on the pole star and Mount Meru, is called kāla-cakra, which means the wheel of time. The idea is, the entire universe is revolving on that axis measuring time. I noted the... that this is called Mount Meru. It's referred to as a mountain and at the same time it's a geometrical shape, in this case the inverted cone. The interesting thing is that in old traditional cultures around the world you find this same concept, where the spin axis...
BH: Yeah.
RLT: Of course we have the term, the North Pole, which is an imaginary pole extending through the earth from the north... northern most point to the southern most point. So in many different cultures, this axis is referred to as a pole or a cylinder, typically said to be made of different kinds of metal. And it's also referred to as a mountain. So that's a very old theme in different cultures.
BH: Now on top of the... by the way, the cone, the wider part of the cone... Is the fact that it's wider at the top and narrower at the bottom anything to do with the way the... and the precession or the way the... Is that a... Is that like a ... What I'm trying to say is; Is that like a description of what the axes are... the circle inscribed in the heavens by our pole? There... I think I said it right.
[15:22]
RLT: Oh, you're referring to the precession of the equinoxes?
BH: Yes
RLT: Well of course, the precession of the equinoxes... means that the spin axis is slowly rotating in a big cone. I think that's what you're referring to...
BH: Correct, yes.
RLT: ...that this is a cone, and that precession means the spin axis moves through a cone like a spinning top. I don't believe that this conical shape specifically refers to that.
BH: Okay, thank you. I was just curious about that. Now on top of the surface of the cone, what do you have?
RLT: Well what you have there is the city of Lord Brahmā, and it is surrounded by eight cities of the Lords of the Directions. So this again is a theme you find in cultures all over the world. Namely that at the top of the cosmic mountain, or the spin axis, there is an abode of the gods. The most familiar example would be Mount Olympus with the gods living on top of it.
What you'll find is that in many societies, the spin axis is referred to as a local mountain. For example, Mount Olympus in Greece. Even if you go to various Indian tribes in North America or South America, you'll see that they have a local mountain that they refer to as the cosmic axis. And typically, the abode of the gods is said to be on top of that mountain.
BH: The World Tree. Where does the World Tree fit into this?
RLT: Well, the concept of the World Tree is another idea that you find spread through many old traditional cultures. In the case of the Bhāgavatam cosmology, there are four World Trees surrounding the very base of this cone. You can't easily see them on the cover of the book here. If you knew where to look, you could see them.
But there are four mountains in the cardinal directions surrounding the base of the cone.
BH: Well you can see the little green tip there. Isn't that what that is?
RLT: Yeah. Those would be the trees. So there you have four sacred trees. In other accounts, there is one sacred tree that is centered on the Mount Meru itself, on the cosmic axis. So this concept of the sacred tree is also very widespread. In some cases you'll see that the sacred tree is there in place of the mountain. In other cases it's growing on top of it. For example, if you look in Scandinavian mythology, you'll find that the cosmic mountain has a tree called Yggdrasil on top of it. That's the sacred tree of that tradition.
BH: Yeah. I'll hold up page 136 to the microphone. Friends, take a look at figure 5.5 and then...
RLT: On page 136?
BH: Yes. And then... then go to... This is what I found quite extraordinary, in a sense, the... my interest: Examples of world mountains or pillars.
RLT: Right.
BH: You have 2 1/2 pages here. Was it? Yeah. 2 1/2 pages. You have listed this... examples of world mountains and pillars all around the planet. Friends, we're not saying just a few places around the planet. You know like some people say, "Well it's all over the place." And then you ask them and they can only give you three or four. It must be somewhere in the area... You've listed at least... in the area of maybe thirty different areas literally all over the planet with the same general design, symbolic design.
I particularly like the one... and I'll hold this up to the microphone again so our listeners can take a see at it: Figure 5.5 on page 134 in which you have the generic world disk found in cultures all over the world. I, you know... These, to me, are, from a symbolic aspect... are enormously valuable in understanding that perhaps, you know, that there are various theories, I would... I don't have to imagine. But there are at least three different theories as to how this might be. How in the world did all of these cultures come upon the same symbolism dealing with the universe? Which could be reflected to, of course... to our Solar System, as Dr. Thompson says, to our planet, and to even certain parts of the globe. How... what are the ways is that possible to happen? How is that possible to happen?
[20:41]
RLT: Well, the simplest explanation would be that you have transmission of culture all around the world in ancient times. This generic world model that you mentioned on page 134 – basically I just took the common themes and put them in one picture there. But there are many different themes.
There's the idea of the disk shaped central continent, just like that disk you mentioned first on the cover of the book, the central cosmic axial mountain, the abode of god... of the gods on top of it; the cosmic tree, which isn't shown in that picture. Then the idea of four rivers coming out from the cosmic mountain in the cardinal directions; the idea of the circular ocean surrounding that central disk shaped continent; then the idea of a series of planes below that continent and above it; the concept of a cosmic serpent in the underworld. There's a whole series of different points that you find connected together in the same way in cultures all over the world. So the indication would be that people must have been in communication so that these traditions were able to have an impact all over the world.
BH: Would you call that diffusion?
RLT: Well yes. Cultural diffusion would seem to be the simplest explanation. People did get around.
BH: Yeah they certainly did get around a lot more than we've been told, and I've been waiting for Dr. Schoch's more recent book. By the way, he'll be joining us again in the weeks to come friends, to update his research on the sphinx etc. But... but I'm especially looking forward, you know, to his conclusions, at a minimum, 15,000 - 20,000 years people have been crossing the Atlantic and some of course say, it's always been that way. 'Cause if you sat in a big enough bathtub, you're bound to get here in about six weeks if you go along certain gulf streams. Or currents that is.
So cultural diffusion would be one way to determine how... or suggest how this came about. What other ways are there?
RLT: Well, of course, one way that people might sometimes try to explain it would be what they call independent invention. Namely that people weren't in communication, but independently, because they had similar psychology and so forth, they came up with similar ideas. I think though that that's ruled out by the very specific details that you find in common in all of these different cosmologies.
Then finally, another explanation would be some kind of communication with higher beings or something like that. That can't be completely dismissed because, in the traditional cultures people tended to assert that, in fact, they did have such communication in the distant past.
BH: Would you say that the most popular view would be that of cultural diffusion?
RLT: Well that's the simplest from...
BH: It would appear to be the most rational right?
RLT: Yeah. In terms of requiring the simplest, most economical assumptions, that... that would be the better explanation. Certainly there's a lot of evidence that transoceanic travel did exist long before Columbus.
BH: Yes indeed. Yes indeed. They were... It seems they were mining copper in the regions of Michigan etc back there about 1200, 1500 BC. That's where a great deal of the copper was going into the... into the Mediterranean. Copper was enormously important, of course, especially if you wanted to fight.
[24:57]
RLT: The Bronze Age.
BH: Yeah. In the Bronze Age. Now, this information... I... We could go on and on describing the symbols but of course I can only hold it up to the microphone so long. And not everyone has the kind of sight needed to see it. But I wanted to move now into... How... Why symbols were used. That is... There is kind of like... Much of this is expressed in mythological language and of course today when you talk about myths, most scientists start to roll their eyes and say: Oh my, you know, this person needs a little bit of help. But I don't have that view of myths and mythological perspectives and I think that's something we certainly share in common. We'll return with Dr. Richard Thompson, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, Govardhan Hill Publishing, www.sacreduniverse.com.
We have been translating, interpreting certain symbols in the front cover that seem to suggest that the ancients knew a great deal more about the universe that we live in than we're led to believe. Is that a fair statement Richard?
RLT: Well yes. Concerning mythology: Of course mythological stories tend to be attractive and easy to remember; they have an intriguing plot and so forth. What we find, if we look at the cosmology of the Bhāgavatam, is that mythology can convey scientific information. Mythological stories have different levels of meaning, and not necessarily just a superficial level and one inner level which would be the meaning. But a given mythological presentation might have several different interpretations which were intended by the author of that presentation. So there's more to mythology than meets the eye.
BH: Yeah, I would... I agree. And yet, I believe there's so much more to mythology than what's suggested by the work of Joseph Campbell and many others who follow in his footsteps. I believe there are more dimensions than he has here to... heretofore had time to explore. But he certainly did lay the foundation of some very important research that many have followed into. Now, what kind of knowledge did the symbols portray that the Egypt... I almost said the Egyptians... that the ancient Hindus, if you can refer to them as that, were referring to that may indicate that it was superior knowledge?
RLT: Well, one very interesting interpretation of this text is that it's providing a map of the planetary orbits in the Solar System. As I mentioned, the front cover there is showing part of what is called Bhū-maṇḍala or the earth disk. And it describes... the book describes this disk in terms of geography. So at first glance it seems to be describing what you could call the flat earth.
But what we find if we examine more closely is that this flat earth is not really the earth that we're standing on at all. In fact, it's the plane of the ecliptic. The ecliptic is basically the orbit of the sun as seen against the background of stars. So if you were able to see stars when the sun is out... Of course it's too bright, so you have to use deduction in order to tell what stars the sun is close to as it's moving. But if you imagine that if the sun was much dimmer like the moon, you would see that the sun is steadily moving on a path against the background of stars and it goes around in a great circle...
BH: And that's exactly where we have to pause. And so please hold on to that lie... that line. When we return, hanging out there on the great circle here, our guest is Dr. Richard Thompson. We'll be back in a few minutes.
One of the reasons we've asked Dr. Richard Thompson to join us is because, of course, he wrote the book, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe: The Cosmology of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. And it's published by Govardhan Hill Publishing. You can visit his website at www.sacreduniverse.com. You can order a copy of this book by calling 1 not... excuse me, 904-462-0466. A lot of fours in there, a lot of sixes in there.
Now it seems to me that the ancients knew about the precession of the equinoxes, and if they did, this obviously affected their cosmology. And Dr. Richard Thompson was talking about... You were holding onto a great circle. Do you remember that great circle, Richard?
[30:38]
RLT: Yes. I was just in the process of explaining the idea of what the ecliptic means.
BH: Yes sir.
RLT: So... And the point being that this earth disk actually corresponds to the plane of the ecliptic. So people were using geographical language to refer to something that's actually in outer space. And this is an idea actually which is not new. There was a book called Hamlet's Mill...
BH: Oh. Goodness me.
RLT: ... published some years ago by two scholars, Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. And they did a comparative study of mythology from all over the world. And they came to the conclusion the flat earth originally was not simply a naive extension of our local horizon out to some edge where you would fall off into an abyss. But actually the flat earth referred to something that really is flat, namely the plane of the ecliptic in which you have the sun moving, and very close to that plane, the orbits of the moon and the different planets, Mercury through Saturn. So that is what people actually referred to in ancient times, if you go back far enough, by the flat earth.
BH: Well, what were you going to say? Richard?
RLT: Yes
BH: You were going to say something else?
RLT: Well, yes, a couple of additional points. The interesting thing that emerged in this study of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa is that the earth disk of Bhū-maṇḍala is marked by a series of rings, or circles, as I was mentioning before. And we know the dimensions of these rings because they're given in certain... in multiples of a certain unit. It turns out that these rings correspond very closely to the orbits of the planets. So that's a very remarkable correlation between knowledge that in modern history was acquired only recently through the use of astronomical telescopes and so forth, and the description of the universe in this ancient text.
BH: Well I'm so happy that you referred to the work Hamlet's Mill. And your work is... It took me the longest time, years ago, to get a copy of that book and I'm so glad I did. It's the only book I will never lend out because I don't know if I... Did it ever get into a paperback version?
RLT: I've never seen it in paperback.
BH: No. No, I wish it had been. It could have been more accessible, from a certain perspective. But you know, this is obviously, I think, where consciousness is moving on this planet, in that we are beginning to accept that the ancients knew a great deal more about the universe in which they lived in, and that there has been, dare I say it, a bias. Well, you refer to it as a knowledge filter. You refer to a knowledge filter that was... is used by academia and even the media and government, or the establishment. Let's say the establishment, which prevents unwanted information from leaking into mainstream thought. Could you tell us about this?... I like the phrase ‘knowledge filter' because it describes it so well. What is a knowledge filter? How... and how successful has it been in keeping information kinda lost?
RLT: Well the concept of the knowledge filter: Basically that is a fundamental feature of human nature. Knowledge is based on some kind of consensus. If only one person is saying a given thing, we don't call that knowledge. We consider it might potentially be knowledge. But generally knowledge is something accepted within the framework of some kind of society.
[35:31]
So for example, in the present day and age, you have the academic society or the scientific community. So these different subdivisions of human society define a particular body of knowledge. And they tend to restrict potential knowledge based on whether or not it agrees with the established and accepted knowledge in their particular framework.
So the result then is that when a particular view of reality becomes established and widely accepted, then information that doesn't fit into that view of reality tends to get eliminated. It's edited or filtered out. Hence the term ‘knowledge filter.’ So this is something that we see, of course, today...
BH: Could you give us a few examples of some very successful knowledge filters?
RLT: Well, of course, one of the prevailing viewpoints in modern society, based on the great success of science, has been that everything is basically material. And so ideas that tend to go against that tend to be filtered out; and that includes so many different dimensions of experience, for example, which affect people's lives and which people report in different circumstances. But because these experiences don't fit into the prevailing materialistic paradigm, they tend to get edited out. That would just be one example.
BH: Well, I think you have referred to a number of researchers in this work whose work has kind of been edited out. I would imagine his name is pronounced Stecchini.
RLT: Stecchini.
BH: Stecchini and Schwaller de Lubicz and von Dechend. Is it von Dechend? D-E-C...
RLT: Oh, von Dechend was one of the authors of Hamlet's Mill.
BH: Yes. And you know it's unfortunate that their work is not considered seriously. I think in time obviously it will...
RLT: Let me tell you about Stecchini and Schwaller de Lubicz. The story behind how I got involved in studying their work is that first I was doing this study of the old Sanskrit text, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. And I simply stumbled across the fact that the orbits of the planets correspond to the rings in this earth disk. But that correspondence requires that you know the length of a certain unit. The unit is called the yojana and it's about eight miles.
I discovered that in order for that correlation to be exact, it would come out to... much closer to 8.5 miles with some additional decimals. So... and I asked myself; Well is there any historical evidence that a unit of just that length was ever actually used? Well that led to many things, and to make a long story short, I found out that there's evidence that in ancient times people had a scientifically defined system of units. Now when I started investigating this, just like many people, I thought that: Well if you go back in time you'd find that units of measurement become rather crude...
BH: Well we'll return to this system of measurement, 8.5 the yojana, with our guest Dr. Richard Thompson, and we'll find out why it is so important. Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. This is 21st Century Radio.
Our guest this evening is Dr. Richard Thompson. Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. Govardhan Hill Publishing. www.sacreduniverse.com. You can order by calling 904-462-0466.
And, let's see. My goodness. When we took that break, exactly where were we when we last talked?
[40:36]
RLT: We were talking about the units.
BH: Oh yes, the yojana. Sorry about that, because there was something that just popped in my mind. Have you ever heard of a book called Pyramidographia by John Greaves, the first book on the pyramids?
RLT: No. I haven't heard of that particular one.
BH: It's especially peculiar because I'm interested... I've always been interested in... because we're moving into the area of measurements and things of that nature. I've always been interested in some of the theories concerning the measurements of the Great Pyramid. But I got to tell you Richard, I get kind of bored with it Richard 'cause I don't know enough to determine what they're talking about, if you know what I mean.
RLT: Well there's a lot of... A lot has been written about measuring the Great Pyramid. And it gets pretty wildly speculative.
BH: It sure does. And I don't necessarily... think necessarily that any of the interpretations have any validity. So you can waste a lot of time in reading... It's like reading of 1972 pages.
RLT: Well, but the interesting thing is though, there is a foundation of truth behind some of that...
BH: Of course.
RLT: That's where this Livio Stecchini came in, for example. Now he wasn't just looking at the Great Pyramid – he did refer to the Great Pyramid – but he made a study of ancient systems of measurement in general. And he observed two rather... made two rather remarkable claims. One is that if you go back in history, you'll find that modern units of measurement can be related to earlier units. And you can go back century by century and accurately trace the units back. And you find that they become more precise and scientific as you go back, which is just the opposite of what one might think.
BH: Yeah.
RLT: Because we're accustomed to thinking: Well, the yard was defined as the length of the nose of some king to his outstretched fingertip, and so forth. So things must have been very crude. The foot is just the length of somebody's foot, and so on. But it turns out that, although units of measurement... some of them are defined in terms of body parts like the foot or the yard – or the fathom is the distance between your outstretched fingertips if you hold your arms out to the... horizontally and so forth – the units have a scientific basis.
The second thing that he mentioned, which was quite remarkable, is that these units were initially based on measurements of latitude. The idea is: How do you define a basic unit of length? Well one way to do it is to measure the length of a degree of latitude on the earth's surface, and subdivide that. And that gives you your definition for your unit of length. And the advantage of that is it's an indestructible definition because you can always measure the earth again and find out the length of your unit.
So he made these two rather remarkable claims. I investigated the subject and I became convinced that there's a lot of substance in what he's saying. He talked about units of length, volume, and weight. And basically the units of length are the most fundamental. You can make a unit of volume by taking the cube based on a unit of length. And then you can make a unit of weight by filling that cube either with water or with gold, depending on what kind of unit you're trying to create. So he argued that: Based initially on measurements of latitude, certain units were defined. And if you investigate archeological data and so forth, you find that these units really did exist.
[ 45:25 ]
BH: We'll return with our guest, Dr. Richard F... Richard Thompson, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, Govardhan Hill Publishing…
Our guest is Dr. Richard Thompson. The book is Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, Govardhan Hill Publishing. Website? Check it out at www.sacreduniverse.com. You can order a copy of this book by calling 904-462-0466.
So it seems that the ancients knew about the degree of latitude and I don't recall learning anything like that when I was growing up. And I'm... Well, I'm still growing up so I guess that's not exactly right. So Richard, how did the Hindus and the Egyptians learn of this measurement and its importance?
RLT: Well first of all, let me just make the connection there. The... I was describing the work of Stecchini and Schwaller de Lubicz in particular, which revealed that units were defined based on the degree of latitude... a subdivision of the degree of latitude. And it turns out that the yojana, which is the unit used in this ancient Sanskrit text, fits right into that picture, if you use the precise value of about 8.5 miles, which emerged from the study of the planetary orbits. So on the one hand you have a unit being related to planetary orbital measurements. And on the other hand, you find that that dovetails into a whole system of units which are connected with measurement of latitude on the earth.
Now in the modern day and age, in order to make accurate measurements of latitude on the earth, you have to use surveying instruments based on telescopes with very accurate positioning and so on. Likewise, in order to make measurements of distances to planets, you have to make use of telescopes with similar or even greater accuracy. So what we find then is a parallel between the units that emerge from the study of the Bhāgavatam and the units that exactly mesh with these that emerge in the study of ancient civilizations including, well, ancient Rome, Greece, and going back to Egypt.
BH: How did they use this... utilize this information and this measurement in their buildings and architecture? How did they involve it in that?
RLT: Well, the nature of these units actually can be deduced from measurements of ancient monuments. For example, the yojana is about 8.5 miles. That's a long distance. But it was divided into either 32,000 or 16,000 smaller units called hastas. That hasta basically corresponds to the cubit in Western terminology.
Now it can be a little confusing because there were different kinds of cubits. In this case you can see that there were at least two kinds of hastas. But there were systematic relations between these different units. Now if you take the hasta deduced from this yojana of 8.5 miles, you find that that corresponds to a unit that was used in Egypt and you find, in fact, that the side of the Great Pyramid for example, is exactly 500 of these hastas in length.
By the way, one incontestable fact about the Great Pyramid, if you carve away all the speculation, is that the building was laid out with very remarkable accuracy. It's about, in terms of meters... The side... One side of the Great Pyramid is about 230 meters, but the four sides differ from one another only by millimeters. So however that was done, it was laid out very accurately.
[50:31]
And in fact, we find this unit used in India fits exactly 500 times into one side of the Great Pyramid. That's just one example. If you turn to the work of Schwaller de Lubicz, you'd find that he made many different measurements of monuments in Egypt. And he was able to deduce the length of various units on that basis.
Also, by the way, going in the opposite direction from India... Instead of going west to Egypt, if you go east into Indo-China, there's the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which dates back to maybe about the 12th century or so. And that temple complex also is based on the use of a certain unit called hat. And the hat in fact corresponds to this hasta based on the yojana of 8.5 miles. As a matter of fact, even the name is the same because hat corresponds to hasta in various Indian languages. So that gives an idea of the kind of evidence for these different units.
BH: Well a little earlier we discussed the important question of how did the... did ancient India and Egypt come to learn and utilize this knowledge? Was it, you noted, cultural diffusion? You noted independent invention and then communication with higher beings. And I think we... you noted that also... as well that cultural fusion... diffusion seems to be the majority opinion?
RLT: Well.
BH: Is that accurate?
RLT: It's pretty clear that there was communication. I have proposed that basically there was, in ancient times, if you go back far enough, an earlier period of scientific advancement. That doesn't mean that they necessarily had space shuttles and things like that. But nonetheless, there was an earlier period in which people became scientifically advanced and they were able to make accurate measurements. But at that time, I would propose that there was an international scientific community.
Certainly to communicate between India and Egypt is possible. It's a bit slow by camel, but people used to make that trip on a very regular basis. So it's not remarkable that there should have been some communication and cooperation between these different ancient centers of civilization. So that would certainly be one aspect.
BH: Now this inter... the possibility of an international scientific community existing somewhere around 2500 BC that possessed that knowledge and utilized it. I... you know, one theory of communication with higher beings: How do you stand on that particular... in that particular area?
RLT: Well of course, that is always a possibility. And there's the fact that the traditions of the people involve... involved of course, all declare that they were in communication with higher beings. So whether any of this particular astronomical and geographical information was obtained in that way or not is hard to say. I don't feel that it's necessary to postulate that, because it's clear that people would be capable of working that out completely on their own based on recent experience. But at the same time, such things are possible, and that's also something to be looked into.
I might mention briefly that one of the important interpretations of this cosmological system in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa is that it's a model of the heavenly realm. And refers... it refers to the different inhabitants of the heavenly or celestial dimension of existence. So in ancient times, people very much were thinking in terms of higher dimensions, higher beings, and so forth.
BH: How do you... how do you feel about the work of Zecharia Sitchin along the lines of how the Sumerian civilization allegedly received it's information from alleged extraterrestrials?
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RLT: Well of course, the Sumerians, in their own traditions, declare that their civilization was descending to them from higher sources, from higher beings. Zecharia Sitchin basically gave an interpretation of that in terms of modern concepts of space travel. In other words, in his interpretation, the higher beings become extraterrestrials who are visiting in spaceships, and communicating with the troglodytes that are living on the earth, gradually elevating them to a higher level of intelligence through some genetic manipulation. That's his theory. This is basically what you could call the ancient astronaut theory.
If you look at the different traditions, you can see that there's considerable evidence that a bit more is involved than simply the idea of extraterrestrials traveling in nuts and bolts spaceships of the kind that we might hope to build ourselves. But there's the idea of beings living in other dimensions of reality, parallel worlds, and so forth. So if you generalize to that conception, that's a whole, of course, subject that you can go into. And there's a good deal of evidence that there might be something to that.
BH: Well it's an interesting theory, no two ways about it. A lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon there and... and I... gosh, at least since... for the last 15 or so years. And I find that there are some areas of it that are problematical, but that's only my perspective.
Our guest is Dr. Richard Thompson. The book is Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, Govardhan Hill Publishing. I learned a great deal from this work, friends.
Our guest the last two hours has been Dr. Richard Thompson. The book that we've been glancing through is Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, published by Govardhan Hill Publishing. Website www.sacreduniverse.com. You can order by calling 904-462-0466.
My last question, of which I have still about eighteen other questions, but... was going to be dealing with the Kali-yuga and the starting date of that but I think I'm gonna bypass that because of our limited amount of time.
And what would you like to review for us that we haven't talked about already in as brief a time... in about a minute and a half?
RLT: Well it's... there are many topics to discuss.
BH: Oh sure.
RLT: Basically, as I mentioned, the cosmology in this ancient text: On the one hand, the... seen as a mythological story, you find the same story told in cultures all over the world. That's one basic observation. But then when we look at the details of this particular story we find a lot of scientific astronomical information embedded in it. And that turns out to link to other information having to do with units of measurement and their scientific definition. So the indication seems to be that ancient mythology was not necessarily simply fairy tales. There could be many levels of meaning. And one point to notice is that in this case, because we have the modern astronomical knowledge to guide us, we can read out from the text certain levels of interpretation regarding astronomy.
BH: And that's about where we're gonna have to leave it this evening. Dr. Richard Thompson, thank you ever so much for joining us again on 21st Century radio.