Reality check, mate

The construction of The Temple of the Vedic Planetarium project (TOVP) in Mayapur, West Bengal, India, is moving at a good pace, and the superstructure (unfinished exterior shell, unfinished concrete walls and floors) is supposed to be completed by this time next year. To see their constant progress in pictures go to http://tovp.org/en/media-gallery. Meetings going on with various ISKCON leaders for their various concerns just prior to the annual Gaura Purnima festival have just concluded in Mayapur. The festival officially began yesterday with the inauguration ceremony. For those meetings the TOVP team has produced a new video showing an animation of some of the internal finished results of the temple. What I found interesting in the people speaking in the video is the claim of the purpose of the temple, we hear a few times that its purpose is to challenge the mechanistic view of the cosmos. They, including Alfred Brush Ford aka Ambarish Das, the main financial and moving force behind the project, tell stories on how the project came into existence based upon Prabhupadas desire to showcase what he called Vedic cosmology. It can be argued there is no concise Vedic cosmology, instead there are different models given from different sources. Prabhupada consistently referred to the Puranic model, as detailed in the Bhagavat Purana and other Puranas, as Vedic cosmology. Prabhupada spoke often of his disdain for modern cosmology, insisting it was all wrong, and that the real structure of the cosmos is revealed in the ancient cosmology of Hindu or Vedic scriptures.

Whats interesting is that Prabhupada had a faulty understanding of that Vedic cosmology, leading him to believe that the sun was closer to us than the moon, and that all the stars in the night sky are actually planets, not stars. He taught that the Puranic model of a Brahmanda is a literal model of the universe we live in. The descriptions of a Brahmanda are Earth-centric, with the Earth at the center, which the rest of a Brahmanda surrounds. One of the characteristics of a Brahmanda is that it has one star, our sun. Looked at in a simplistic way the Puranic model of a Brahmanda can appear quite unscientific and naive, a quaint mythological construct created by primitive peoples long ago. It appears to promote a flat Earth, among other seemingly primitive ideas. The truth is that the Puranic model is quite sophisticated, the ancient astronomers and astrologers werent so naive as a simplistic understanding of their model might appear to those without understanding of their scientific methods. Dr. Richard L. Thompson (Sadaputa Das), a scientist and mathematician, did extensive research on the cosmological models of ancient India. He found that rather than a simplistic view one might have of a mythological Earth-centric flat Earth model of the cosmos being presented in the ancient texts, that instead they present four different models at the same time in the Brahmanda conceptionwhich is spherical, and split in half by

the plane of Bhu-mandala which we live on. A Brahmanda or Bhu-mandala can be viewed as: 1. Polar projection map of the Earth 2. Map of the solar system 3. Topographical map of south central Asia 4. Celestial realm of the Devas Bhu-mandala, as Dr. Thompson shows, can refer to the plane of the ecliptic (plane of Earths orbit around the sun). The solar system itself is mostly aligned around the Earths ecliptic, both in the Bhu-mandala model and modern cosmology. The actual sophistication of the ancient Indian models are quite impressive, in no way did they support a flat earth conception mentioning how if the sun appears in the sky in one part of the world, in the opposite part its dark. Dr. Thompson goes to great lengths to show how closely those ancient conceptions relate to modern cosmological views. Dr. Thompson wrote a few books on the topic, you can see this video he made which sums up his fascinating research in the video titled Vedic Cosmology Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. As you may have noticed, according to Dr. Thompsons research, in no way does the Brahmanda model refer to our universe. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who was the initiating guru of Dr. Thompson into the Gaudiya Vaishnava bhakti-yoga tradition, held a different view and purpose for his own expositions on Vedic cosmology. He always insisted and taught in his lectures, writings, and commentaries to his translations of ancient scripture, that a Brahmanda refers to our universe. He makes it clear that his purpose is not to show the similarities between the ancient view with the modern as Dr. Thompson does, rather his stated purpose is to expose modern cosmology as a complete fraud, and that his interpretation of Vedic cosmology is the correct view of our universe. The reason he wanted to build a temple planetarium was to expose the bogus nature of modern cosmology by showcasing the superior Vedic cosmology. That was the origin of the current TOVP project being built in Bengal. In the recent video the TOVP has come out with, instead of Prabhupadas idea of replacing the completely worthless modern cosmology with his version of Puranic cosmology being spoken of as the purpose of the project, instead were told that its purpose is to refute the mechanistic view of the universe. What does that mean? Mechanistic means a purely mechanical physical process. While that was also without a doubt part of Prabhupadas agenda throughout his teachings, i.e. emphasizing Gods presence and control over everything in the universe, his main focus when it came to cosmology was directed at what he saw as a bogus modern view of the structure of the cosmos. Prabhupada vehemently opposed the Apollo moon landings, claiming they wouldnt be able to succeed because the demi-gods on the moon, which he claimed is actually a lush paradise instead of a dust and rock strewn lifeless environment, would prevent the astronauts from landing. He also claimed that because modern science didnt understand that the moon was much further away from us than the sun, that they would miscalculate the distance and time needed to reach the moon, and would therefore run out of fuel and starve. Even using the Puranic model of a Brahmanda and Bhu-mandala which Prabhupada based his views upon, Prabhupada was still wrong. He held a very simplistic view of those writings, which as Sadaputa Das (Dr.Thompson) has shown, and really even a cursory reading of the Puranic

accounts should revealthey dont present the sun as being closer to us than the moon. As Ive pointed out earlier, and you can see in the video above by Dr. Thompson, the Puranic account has Bhu-mandala as a vast ecliptic plane, with the sun slightly lower above the ecliptic than the moon, but the distance of the Earth (Bharata-varsha) from the sun is still much further than from the moon. Imagine a plate with two balls on strings above it, one ball revolves around the center in a large orbit a long distance from the center, and the other ball revolves in a closer orbit to the center. If the ball in the closer orbit is a bit higher above the plate than the ball in the large orbit, that doesnt make it further away from the center of the plate beneath them, its still closer. Prabhupada didnt understand that, he insisted that the moon was further from us than the sun because it is said to be higher above the Bhu-mandala plane than the sunand therefore the moon landings would fail because of that miscalculation, besides not being allowed by demigods. After the moon landings occurred, Prabhupada heard from some disciples about a guy who was selling a book promoting a moon landing hoax theory, claiming the moon landings had been faked. Prabhupada latched onto that idea and promoted it whenever the topic came up. You can see some of his talks on the moon landing hoax and the moon in general at Can You Answer? Many of Prabhupadas leading disciples during his time with them didnt understand Puranic cosmology either. In this next conversation you can hear them try to figure how it is that you can travel east or west from the same place and end up in the same destination if the Earth isnt a sphere, i.e. if you leave from Los Angeles, travelling east or west you can get to Indiahow is that possible if what Prabhupada taught was correct? From Bhu-mandala Diagram Discussion July 2, 1977 Vrindavan, India Tamla Ka Goswami: Look at the earth. Now, this is a real question that we still have to answer. They picture the earth round, and we say, no. Bh-maala is like a lotus, like this, and the earth is only one part of one island in Bh-maala, and its not, you know, its not round(?). It doesnt look like that. And all the pictures they take of the earth when they go up in their satellites show round. And were going to tell them that its not. This is a very tricky question. In other words, if this is the picture of the world, like this, and we say that If we take an airplane from here, from Los Angeles. Now, supposing we go to India, which is here. So theres two ways to go. One way, you can go like this, and the other way, you can go like that. But if the earth is not a round globe, then how is it sometimes people go from Los Angeles via Hawaii to Japan and then India? So we cant figure this out. We have experience, those of us who have flown, that actually the plane went from Los Angeles to Hawaii to Tokyo to Hong Kong and then to India. So it doesnt work out in our maps so far, right? We cant figure it out. This thing has to be very complete in its answers. Otherwise everyone will laugh at us. We cant leave any loopholes. It appears the TOVP project may not be sticking with Prabhupadas original purpose and ideas about Vedic cosmology defeating bogus modern cosmology. In the new video, theyre talking about showing the faults of a mechanistic view of the cosmos as their purpose, and some time back I read that Sadaputa Das (Dr. Thompson) was consulted as a designer for the projects cosmological presentations. In a lecture a few days ago by ISKCON GBC member Badrinarayana Das in Mayapur, he related a story about Prabhupada outsmarting some foolish

karmi. I know, how surprising! (inside joke about B. Das and his incessant Prabhupada myth making stories) He tells about a time in 1970 when Prabhupada gave an interview to an infamous radio host in Los Angeles: I have one particular incident that comes to my mind. (If anyone has a cell phone you can shut it off. Bad news will still be there later on. Dont worry.) It was the late spring or early summer of 1970 and I was trying to become a bhakta in our Los Angles temple and Prabhupada was invited to speak on a radio show. Anyone who lived in California at that time will know the mans name was Joe Pyne. So it was the Joe Pyne Show and he was infamous for being sarcastic and just really going after his guest. That was the rasa; he would try to slap around his guest like a boxing match. So the devotees were thinking Prabhupada shouldnt go. Why should he subject himself to this? But Prabhupada calculated we will just say Krishna, Krishna, and we will count how many times we say Krishna and the people out there in Southern California will at least hear Krishna. So Prabhupada went. And sure enough, the man was true to color. The first thing he said was, Your coming here to America and you are coming from India, what can you possibly teach us. We already have religious institutions. We have our understanding of God and you are coming from a place where the death rate is so high. What can you teach us? Prabhupada said, Death rate is the same everywhere one hundred percent. [Laughter] So the man was a little taken by that. There was a little pause then he came back and he said, According to your cosmology you say the world is flat. Now they are actually talking, it is a long story but the plane of the solar system, all the planets, that is relatively flat. That is what the Vedas are talking about. But this man misunderstood. He thought it meant the planet earth. So he said, You say the world is flat. Prabhupada replied, Everywhere I walk it is. You can see that hes been influenced by Sadaputa to give a correct understanding of Bhumandala as the plane of the ecliptic, he also makes it seem that the radio host was at fault for thinking Prabhupada taught the Earth is flat. In fact you can see in the previous quote above, that ISKCONs leading disciples even 7 years later in 1977, couldnt understand that the Earth is a sphere because of Prabhupadas cosmological teachings. Ambarish Das (Alfred Ford, heir to Ford motors) famously left ISKCON when he first heard Prabhupadas take on Puranic cosmology and that Prabhupada disputed the moon landings (maybe also the 5th canto of the Bhagavatams descriptions of hellish punishments). Now we see that hes the driving force behind bringing Prabhupadas vision of Vedic cosmology to the worlds attention with the fantastic temple hes helping to build. Its obviously going to create a lot of publicity when completed. Its going to be interesting to see how closely they stick to Prabhupadas original purpose and vision, or if it will be completely based on Sadaputas and similar research? Will they squander the good publicity generated in the amazing architecture and beautiful temple by focusing on what Prabhupada actually taught and thereby making them a laughingstock? I guess well have to wait and see, but one problem I see that is going to be hard to get around even if they stick to what Sadaputa Das taughtPrabhupada is undoubtedly going to be glorified

and become a central part of the completed projectI assume. The problem is what Prabhupada taught about Vedic cosmology, and his complete disdain for modern cosmology. Will they go with that view of attacking the basic structure of the solar system and cosmos? Or will they be content with presenting the similarities with modern cosmology as Sadaputa attempted? Either way, when people search online for what Prabhupada actually taught, they may be in for a surprise.