Just 50 years ago, the conclusions given in the Vedas seemed very distant from scientific conclusions. The conclusions of the Vedas remained the same for thousands of years, but just recently, with the evolution of scientific theories, the different branches of modern science started coming to conclusions that are similar to the Vedas. In other words, the Vedas and modern science were further apart 50 years ago than they are now because, at the time, scientific theories were not evolved enough to experimentally confirm what the Vedas say.
Take for example the idea of multiple universes existing simultaneously given in the Vedas. Although the idea of multiple universes has existed for a long time in the field of science fiction, it started gaining serious traction in scientific circles only in the 1980s, with the development of inflationary cosmology. Alan Guth (1981), for example, suggested that the rapid expansion of the early universe could lead to the creation of multiple, bubble-like universes. The multiverse theory gained further traction in the 1990s and 2000s, as the string theory evolved.
Many speculate that different universes may not be only the stage for different events, but also have different physical laws, and that consequently most of them may not offer the conditions for the appearance of life. This is something we can only speculate about, since it’s not possible to for us to visit any other universe. According to the Vedas, however, all the different material universes are similar, and life is present everywhere because the conditions in each universe are not the result of chance but of a conscious design.
Different universes are not exactly the same, some universes are bigger and more complex than others, and the material manifestations of each universe may be different, but they share the same basic organization and physical laws. The Vedas offer us descriptions of some of these other universes, which helps us to understand them. In the Brhad Bhagavatamrta, for example, there is a description of the saga of Gopa Kumara in search of the Absolute Truth. The events described in the book happened a very long time ago, in a different cycle of creation and in a different universe, but we can notice that it describes people and planets, just like we have here. We can thus see that all universes follow the same basic process of development, although they vary in terms of complexity.
Apart from the concept of multiple universes, the Vedas describe our universe as a multidimensional space, and this is a detail that makes the descriptions quite hard to understand at times since it frequently describes higher levels of reality we don’t have access to. Different beings with different types of bodies and different sets of senses experience the universe in ways different from the way we do.
One simple way to understand the concepts of dimensions is to imagine that our tridimensional reality can be represented on a two-dimensional piece of paper in the form of a map. In a map, a building can be represented in the form of a square, and a bridge in the form of a line that goes over another line that represents a road. The building is not a square, nor a cube, but when we represent it in a two-dimensional map it is represented like this. Similarly, a bridge is a tridimensional structure, there is something under the bridge and there is something over it, but when we put it into a map it looks just like a flat line. Similarly, the gigantic structure of Bhu-mandala is represented in our plane, it appears as our earthly globe, while the celestial moon is described as bigger than the sun and the abode of an extraordinarily opulent civilization is represented as the rocky moon we have access to. Because most of the beings of the universe live in higher dimensions, to which we don’t have access, the universe appears to be uninhabited to us.
The Vedas describe that our universe is divided into 14 planetary systems. Each planetary system is composed of innumerable planets, stars, and other structures. We live somewhere in Bhu-Mandala, the 8th planetary system, but because we live in Kali-yuga, the last of the sequence of four eras when human beings degrade into a base level of consciousness, we have access to only part of it, in the form of the gross dimension we live in. The Vedas explain that in the past human beings had access to other parts of Bhu-Mandala and some could even visit the higher planetary systems of Bhuvarloka, Swargaloka, Maharloka, and even Brahmaloka, which is currently impossible for us.
The Puranas call the Milky Way, the giant path of stars we see when we look to the sky Śiśumāra, which include the planetary system of Swargaloka and extends all the way close to Dhruvaloka, the Polestar. It’s described that Yogis can follow this path after abandoning their mortal bodies to attain the higher planetary systems. Above Dhruvaloka there the planetary systems of Maharloka, Janaloka, Tapoloka and Satyaloka, each one exponentially more distant than the previous. After these higher planetary systems, there are the coverings of the universe, which also include different structures composed of elemental mater. The first covering is ten times larger than the universe itself, and each of the other six coverings is ten times larger than the previous. The universe described in the Puranas is thus practically unlimited, and that’s just one amongst trillions of universes that form the cosmic manifestation.
Nowadays there is great interest in space exploration, but in reality, this is not a very effective way to travel. A small crew may be able to make a dangerous and uncomfortable trip to the moon or Mars at an exorbitant cost, but it will be ultimately unfruitful. Without access to higher dimensions, they will just find sand and rocks anywhere they go. Worse still is that these excursions will be restricted to the vicinities of our planet since any trip outside of the confinements of our solar system would take much longer than a human life. Even if it would be somehow attempted, it would be useless from our point of view, because we would not be there to see the results.
Instead, the Vedas explain that the process of having access to the other planetary systems is by purifying our consciousness and transferring ourselves to an appropriate body at the planetary system of our choice at the time of death. In this way, not only does it become possible to reach higher planetary systems beyond the confinements of our galaxy, but allows us to receive an appropriate body in which we can comfortably live and interact with the inhabitants there.