It turns out, multiverse is one of the few subjects where science and ancient wisdom concur. In Hindu cosmology, ancient texts are filled with mentions of alternate universes. Bhagavata Purana is one such text that covers a wide range of topics from cosmology to mythology. It is one of the earliest written manuscripts, that refers to multiple universes and their connection with each other. Even physicist Bryan E Penprase quotes a translation from The Bhagavata Purana in his book The Power of Stars: “Every universe is covered by seven layers—earth, water, fire, air, sky, the total energy and false ego—each ten times greater than the previous one. There are innumerable universes besides this one, and although they are unlimitedly large, they move about like atoms in you. Therefore, you are called unlimited.”
The Hindu cosmology has countless such narratives that support the theory of multiple universes. Even though one cannot consider them as evidence, they raise a critical question that is hard to ignore: Without any scientific expertise, how could our ancestors have possibly known about parallel universes? Centuries ago, there were no powerful computers or the Hubble telescope in space to help people support such theories. Still, the ancient scriptures are full of references to constellations, multiverse, time dilation, and many other astronomical concepts. One can only wonder how.
Dr C V Giridhara Shastry, a Sanskrit and Vedic scholar, has a take on this puzzle. “Hindu mythology is filled with many awe-inspiring reports on measuring the distance between the earth and the sun or the right size of our planet. I believe they were able to do so because they were good observers and remarkable mathematicians. Maybe, they knew that sun is a star that is burning in our cosmos. And like our world, there might be other worlds as well, hanging in tandem to ours.” What he says, makes sense. Around 1,000 years ago, people could measure the circumference of earth through the shadows casted by the sun. All with the help of a little geometry.
However, even with speculations that seem to have merit, there is no way, as yet, to prove the concept of multiverse. Because, in the end, science believes in evidence and things it can measure. Given that so far, we haven’t even explored our own universe to its full limit, it does sound rather fantastical to think we can discover multiverse, if the theory is even true. It will probably take us centuries, if not thousands of years, before we touch the circumference of our own universe. Maybe then we will have answers to questions that have baffled us for thousands of years. Until then, we can only theorise and hypothesise where our curiosity could take us next.
