770702 - Conversation B - Vrndavana

Conversations by Date, 1977

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

770702DC-VRNDAVAN - July 02, 1977 - 37:55 Minutes

(Bhu-mandala diagram discussion)

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: They have to stand up on the chairs because it's so big. Big project. This is only one drawing. Imagine the planetarium. (break)

Yaśodā-nandana: The directions are north, east, south and west. In the middle here, right in the middle, there is Mount Meru, which is very, very small. The scale, it comes to be one centimeter . . . what is this measurement estimate?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: One twentieth of a centimeter.

Yaśodā-nandana: One twentieth of a centimeter is calculated 100,000 yojanas. One lakh of yojanasis one twentieth of a centimeter.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Śrīla Prabhupāda, that one twentieth of a centimeter . . . one centimeter is about just the tip of the finger, so one twentieth of this is 100,000 yojanas. Actually, you cannot even see Mount Meru on this picture. It is so small that we could not even draw it. It's just a pinpoint.

Yaśodā-nandana: Mount Meru is in the middle, and then, surrounding Mount Meru, is the whole Jambūdvīpa. Jambūdvīpa is 100,000 yojanasor (sic) 800 miles in length and width. These are the maps we have shown you already previously. And surrounding Jambūdvīpa in the salt ocean, this very little circle . . . the salt ocean is the same width as Jambūdvīpa, or 100,000 yojanas. That is 800,000 miles. That is this all around the Jambūdvīpa. Here it is. Maybe you can see. Then there is the salt water ocean. You can see here?

Bhakti-prema: No, Plakṣadvīpa is the orange dot.

Yaśodā-nandana: Then surrounding Jambūdvīpa then there is Plakṣadvīpa, the next dvīpa, which is . . . around the salt ocean there is Plakṣadvīpa. That is the planet beside of the river we call ocean. That is 200,000 yojanas, or 1,600,000 miles. That is right in the middle.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Actually, you can hardly see it there. It's very small.

Yaśodā-nandana: Then, surrounding Plakṣadvīpa is another ocean, the sugarcane ocean. That sugarcane ocean is the same length as Plakṣadvīpa, or 200,000 yojanas, or 1,600,000 miles. And on each one of these dvīpas . . .

Prabhupāda: So in each ocean there are islands?

Bhakti-prema: No. These are all oceans.

Prabhupāda: Simply ocean.

Bhakti-prema: Yes.

Yaśodā-nandana: Now, each one of these dvīpas are inhabited by different sons of Mahārāja Priyavrata. Mahārāja Priyavrata had so many sons, and each one of their sons . . .

Prabhupāda: No, no, but the sun is the king, but he is ruling over the ocean?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: No, he is ruling over the dvīpa.

Bhakti-prema: Yes, he rotated around the Mount Meru. Seven times he went. And then to the . . . (indistinct)

Prabhupāda: Now, oceans, but there is no inhabitant.

Bhakti-prema: No.

Prabhupāda: Simply ocean.

Bhakti-prema: Oceans. There are no dvīpas, no islands. Islands are surrounded by oceans, rather than oceans are surrounded by islands.

Prabhupāda: So what is his kingdom?

Bhakti-prema: An island . . . islands are so big, very big . . . (indistinct)

Prabhupāda: Where is the island?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: There.

Yaśodā-nandana: The islands are surrounding the oceans. It goes in a circle. There's a whole ocean surrounds one island. And each island is divided by seven mountains and seven rivers, and the main sons of Mahārāja Priyavrata, they also have sons, and each one of those seven divisions are being ruled by the seven grandsons of Mahārāja Priyavrata like this.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: In other words, Śrīla Prabhupāda, Priyavrata had seven children, seven islands, and each one of them had seven children. So each son of Priyavrata divided his island in seven parts, and it was given to one of the grandsons of Priyavrata. We could not show that because it's so small. This is drawn exactly to scale. In order to include all of the Bhū-maṇḍala we had to make everything else very small because, as you'll see, most of Bhū-maṇḍala is made up of Loka-varṣa and Lokāloka Mountain. Everything else is very small compared to those two.

Yaśodā-nandana: Surrounding the sugarcane ocean, there is Śālmalidvīpa, where again there are seven divisions of land, seven rivers . . .

Prabhupāda: So island and surrounded by ocean, like that.

Bhakti-prema: Yes.

Yaśodā-nandana: Śālmalidvīpa is that little purple here. Still, it is very difficult to see. And surrounding Śālmalidvīpa is an ocean of liquor, Surā-sāgara. There's an ocean of liquor. There is Kuśadvīpa.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Which one is that?

Yaśodā-nandana: The little red circle is the Surā-sāgara. Then the little green here is the Kuśadvīpa. One particular feature of this land is that there's very . . . kuśa grass, which is very, very cooling. It is all over the island. And then there is the ghee ocean which is surrounding Kuśadvīpa. That is the dark green.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Dark green.

Yaśodā-nandana: No, the ghee ocean is the yellow color. The ghee ocean is surrounding the Kuśadvīpa. In fact, again surrounding the ghee ocean is Krauñcadvīpa, but Krauñcadvīpa is 1,600,000 yojanasin width. That means 12,800,000 miles. It is getting bigger, twice as big, as we go further. And past Krauñcadvīpa, surrounding Krauñcadvīpa, is the milk ocean, and this milk ocean is surrounding the whole Krauñcadvīpa. And then again there is mention that the Śvetadvīpa Ocean, the Śvetadvīpa where Lord Viṣṇu . . . Lord Viṣṇu resides there in white island. This Your Divine Grace has described in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta.

Bhakti-prema: Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu resides there.

Yaśodā-nandana: Yes, kṣīra. Kṣīra means milk. Śākadvīpa is surrounding the milk ocean.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: What color is it?

Yaśodā-nandana: Śākadvīpa, it is green, this green here. It is pale green. And Śākadvīpa is surrounded by the yogurt ocean, dahī, dahī ocean. This is the white here. This yogurt ocean is 3,200,000 yojanas, or 25,600,000 miles of width. Then, surrounding this yogurt ocean is Puṣkaradvīpa. This is the reddish brown here. Puṣkaradvīpa is 6,400,000 yojanas in width, or 51,200,000 miles. And here, in the middle of Puṣkaradvīpa, all around is the Mānasottara range of mountains, which is situated in the middle and which has a width of 10,000 yojanas. Now, from the middle of Mount Meru until Puṣkaradvīpa it is calculated to be 15,750,000 yojanas.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: We calculated all these . . .

Yaśodā-nandana: This was all calculated according to the Bhāgavatam. And then, on the four corners, on top of this Mānasottara range of mountains, the loka-pālas, Mahendra, Varuna, Kuvera, they are residing in these four corners, guarding the directions of the universe. And past . . .

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Now wait a moment. What goes there? The most important thing is that on top of that Mānasottara range . . .

Yaśodā-nandana: On top of the Mānasottara range . . . if this map could be placed on the ground and Mount Meru would be like this, and all the oceans go around, the sun, which is again 16,000 yojanas above Mount Meru, goes all around Mount Mānasottara, continuously, every day.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: So where does it go now? Where does the sun go?

Yaśodā-nandana: The sun would go like this, all around. It would be above. It's constantly moving round the top, circumambulating the Mount Meru and going just above the Mānasottara range of mountains. This little brown line, gray line, within the circle is the Mānasottara range of mountains. And surrounding this Puṣkaradvīpa there is sweet-water ocean throughout the whole . . . there's sweet-water ocean. It's 6,400,000 yojanas, or 51,200,000 miles. And past the sweet-water ocean there is Kāñcana-bhūmi, or a golden land, where everything . . . this is a land that's described to be just like a mirror, where no living being can be, because as soon as something is dropped there, it disappears. That is a very peculiar feature of this land. This land, this golden land, is 15,750,000 yojanas. That means that this land here . . . the width of this land is the same as between Mānasottara Mountain and the middle of Mount Meru. It is very scientific like this. And past this golden land . . .

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: We used a calculator to calculate all this.

Yaśodā-nandana: Past this golden land, until here, is the Lokāloka Mountain, which is the border between this Aloka-varṣa, or the uninhabited land, and the inhabited place. This Aloka-varṣa is constituted to be a protective mountain that stops the rays of the sun to go beyond this portion. And it goes very, very high, it is described. It goes higher than Dhruvaloka. So the whole planetary system of Bhū-maṇḍala is like a big lotus flower with very high, high petals. It is very wonderful.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Which is that Lokāloka?

Yaśodā-nandana: This is the Lokāloka mountain.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Just see how much it is, Śrīla Prabhupāda. It's like the whole Bhū-maṇḍala is protected by a huge mountain.

Prabhupāda: Karach.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yeah. And only in the very center are the inhabited lands of Bhū-maṇḍala.

Prabhupāda: The sun is above them?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Not above Lokāloka. Inside, within.

Yaśodā-nandana: If this would be on the floor, that means Mount Meru would be 84,000 yojanas. Then, above Mount Meru, 16,000 yojanas above, is the sun. But then, so that the rays of the sun would not penetrate in that land all around, this great mountain, Lokāloka, extends all the way up to Svarga. So it is like a big, big cup, in which the middle of the cup, or the bottom, there is all of these planets, all of this Bhū-maṇḍala. And past this Lokāloka range of mountains is this Aloka-varṣa, which is described that there is no living being which can go to there. The only occasion where anyone went through there is when Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna went to see the Mahā-Viṣṇu in the spiritual sky. So Kṛṣṇa with His cakra penetrated through all of these regions, and then He went through all of the coverings of the universe who were there. That was the only occasion where anyone went to this land. So this is a general picture of Bhū-maṇḍala.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: To scale.

Prabhupāda: Then the sun . . . above the sun there is moon.

Yaśodā-nandana: Yes, and above the sun there is the moon.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: That we have to . . .

Yaśodā-nandana: That is our next project.

Bhakti-prema: Sixteen lakhs miles above the sun there is moon.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: So far, we have stayed in the Bhū-maṇḍala. We've now . . . this picture covers Bhū-maṇḍala. We were thinking to do one more—we can do it later on—one more drawing to give it more detail, because the center of Meru and Jambūdvīpa and salt ocean are so small on this map you cannot even see it. So we want to . . .

Prabhupāda: Hmm, in detail.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: We want to blow up one area, like they do on some maps. They show one city bigger than other places 'cause it's important. And after that, our next business is to now go upwards. Now we've gone outward this way. Now we have to show the sun, the moon, the sapta-ṛṣis, everything like that. That'll be very nice doing, how the sun is . . .

Yaśodā-nandana: Another unique feature of this map is that . . . Bhakti-prema Mahārāja found about . . . there is one space which is mentioned by Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura in his commentary. The complete diameter from west to east and north to south, it is calculated to be 500,000,000 yojanas. So in order to be able to adjust that, we needed 250,000,000 on each side.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: That means 4,000,000,000 miles.

Prabhupāda: That I have given there.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yes.

Yaśodā-nandana: Yes, that was mentioned. His Divine Grace has mentioned it. So the total distance of all the seas was coming to about 496. So we understood from the commentary of Viśvanātha Cakravartī that there is a little space, vacant space. Between this vacant land there is a little guarded space, between this Aloka-varṣa and the covering of the universe, which is 1,700,000 yojanas on each side of the universe. And Viśvanātha Cakravartī explains that the reason for this is that under all the planetary systems there is the eight elements, which are sustaining all the Bhū-maṇḍalas and all the lower planetary systems. And if this is touching the side of the universe, then these elements would have nothing to do. There would be no function for them. Therefore, that is one reason . . . and another reason he was giving is that when Varāha-avatāra lifted the earth, if the Bhū-maṇḍala is touching the side of the universe, then there's no place to lift it. Therefore, by his calculations . . . you have given that a very long purport with all the Sanskrit. According to Jyotir Veda, like this, it was mentioned that there is little space between the outer part of the universe and Aloka-varṣa. That is the space, so that Varāha could lift up the earth from the Garbhodaka Ocean. (Prabhupāda chuckles)

Bhakti-prema: (indistinct) . . . mountain.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: I think, Śrīla Prabhupāda, that you gave that right in the purport, in . . . (indistinct) . . . see, you gave this huge . . . it says here, "However, the technical terms used in the astronomical calculations given by the Jyotir Veda are difficult to translate into English. Therefore, to satisfy the reader, we may include the exact Sanskrit statement given by Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura, which records exact calculations regarding universal affairs." And then you give this huge Sanskrit quotation. And from reading this, Bhakti-prema Mahārāja found out that there is space. Due to this purport we got that information. So it was perfectly put in here. It's very nice.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: So I think that Svarūpa Dāmodara will be helped by these drawings once the men come. 'Cause he said that even though they are scientists, they could not understand this volume. It's been a mystery practically. These drawings, one by one, should be able to help in the creation of that planetarium.

Prabhupāda: Thank you very much. Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Now we have to figure out how to preserve these, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Puṣkara Prabhu was concerned how to preserve these pictures, and we were thinking that maybe they should be mounted on canvas and stretched.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: And that way, they can be preserved.

Prabhupāda: Like map.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Oh, oh, like a map. Once they are put on canvas, can they be rolled, Puṣkara?

Puṣkara: Yeah. The best thing is to put them on a board and just permanently put these onto the best possible . . .

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says the best thing is to mount them on something and then display them somewhere, keep them permanently that way, stretched out.

Puṣkara: Every time you roll it, it gets ruined more.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Every time you have to roll it . . .

Prabhupāda: Take one room in the gurukula building.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: It will be very interesting. They can use this for teaching.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Explain there in bold and this picture.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yeah, explanation next to it. This book is the explanation.

Prabhupāda: Hmm.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: It's amazing how Kṛṣṇa has made each universe. It's just like all the fruits. When you get a fruit, it's protected by a skin. This universe is very much protected, first by uninhabited land, then by huge mountain, then by golden land. And then only in the center of these dvīpas there are all the inhabitants and all the activities are going on. Very much protected.

Prabhupāda: And they are going to the moon. (devotees laugh) I . . . so far I remember, the moon is also like the sun, that it is fire blazing, but it is surrounded by a cool atmosphere. Therefore it is soothing. I think there is such description.

Bhakti-prema: Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam says the moon is also . . . (indistinct)

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: How far do they, the scientists, say the moon is from the earth? How long? I have a book which says it, and I'm bringing this book. It's very . . . you'll see it here. It's nonsense.

Bhakti-prema: Twenty-four lakhs miles.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Twenty-four lakhs miles, the scientists say?

Bhakti-prema: No.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: What do the scientists say? How . . .?

Prabhupāda: Two lakhs.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Two lakhs miles, 250,000 miles. So that means about, in yojanas, very little—about 25-, 30,000 yojanas.

Yaśodā-nandana: They say the sun is 93,000,000 away.

Bhakti-prema: I think the business of the . . . (indistinct)

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: They have froglike brains.

Prabhupāda: That, the microscope . . . what is called? Telescope.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: This is the book of the rascal scientists. They describe the solar system according to their nonsense. The solar system . . . gives all the calculations. They calculated how much it weighs on each planet. (laughs) They haven't even been there. They say that each planet has moons. Says here—this is how scientific they are—"Pluto was discovered only in 1930, and as yet, little is known about this remote planet. Pluto is much smaller than Neptune and has a diameter probably about . . ."

Prabhupāda: "Probably."

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: ". . . half the size."

Prabhupāda: "Probably."

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: "The orbit of Pluto is extremely elliptical, and the day is some 6,109 hours long. There is probably no atmosphere, and there are no known moons."

Prabhupāda: "Probably." Their science is "probably." Probably it is science; otherwise it is nonsense. (laughter)

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: It says here, "The moon is 238,860 miles from the earth. It has no atmosphere, no weather and no wind."

Prabhupāda: "Probably." Everything "probably."

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: It says here, "There is a thick dust covering and no evidence to suggest that the moon has ever supported life." In that newspaper article the man who is exposing them said—because they say it is covered by dust—"How is it that no dust is shown on the astronauts' suits when they walked around?" He says: "If there's such a thick dust, then, when the rocket landed, it would have made a pocket within that dust." He says: "But there's no crater around the rocket. Then how is it possible that these things are like that?" 'Cause actually they forgot. When they were making the stage-setting in Arizona, they forgot these things.

Yaśodā-nandana: One argument Your Divine Grace gave in 1971 was that if they went to the moon and they found it like rocks, how do they explain the moon is so shiny and gives such a cooling effect? They cannot explain that.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: This is the earth. And this is a real question that we still have to answer. They picture the earth round, and we say, no. Bhū-maṇḍala is like a lotus, it's like this, and the earth is only one part of one island in Bhū-maṇḍala, and it's not, you know, it's . . . (indistinct) . . . it doesn't look like that. And all the pictures they take of the earth when they go up in their satellites show round. And we're going to tell them that it's 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 there's 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 to India? So we can't 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 doesn't work out in our maps so far, right? We can't figure it out. This thing has to be very complete in its answers. Otherwise everyone will laugh at us. We cannot leave any loopholes.

Prabhupāda: So are you thinking on this?

Bhakti-prema: In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam . . . according to Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, it is . . . (indistinct)

Prabhupāda: Find out from our side, according to Bhāgavatam.

Bhakti-prema: Scientists are lacking in the main points.

Prabhupāda: Yes. They "probably," so many theories.

Bhakti-prema: There is . . . Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam describes about Himalaya. Himalaya is 80,000 miles high, 16,000 miles wide. That means covering more than earth, more area than . . . (indistinct) . . . they do not think how many miles . . . (indistinct)

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Then it's not so much. In other words, Śrīla Prabhupāda, the Himalaya Mountains are here, according to us. This yellow here is the Himalayas. This is a map, showing all the mountains. So according to Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, how long do they stretch?

Bhakti-prema: Sixteen thousand miles wide.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: So the Himalayas are 16,000 miles wide. Sixteen thousand miles is a huge area, it's beyond this whole area. So according to the Bhāgavatam, this is all Himalayas.

Bhakti-prema: Yes, then it is coming this side, up to Canada, this all Himalayas.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: So what is the explanation?

Bhakti-prema: And previously they . . . there are nine islands, completely divided by deep oceans. They were extending for 8,000 miles each. And now those islands are not found . . . (indistinct)

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: And how high is the Himalayan Mountains?

Bhakti-prema: Eighty thousand miles.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Ten thousand yojanas, 80,000 miles. Here it says that "The highest mountain is Mount Everest, 29,000 feet." Not very high. That's about six miles. And we are saying 80,000 miles. So we want to know where is that. How high is Govardhana supposed to be?

Bhakti-prema: Govardhana . . . (indistinct) . . . Govardhana mountain is sinking.

Prabhupāda: Sinking.

Bhakti-prema: Crushed by . . . (indistinct) (break)

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: So the Rand McNally's Illustrated World Atlas, its special feature is that it gives maps describing all different subjects, like language. What language is spoken throughout different places is the world is shown by map, and the national areas, according to size, population, and cities, major populations, densities of populations. Like China is supposed to be . . . China. This shows proportionately in populations according to . . . this is India, the second biggest. Everything else is very small compared to these two, India and China. Agriculture, what kind of agriculture, natural vegetation, climate . . . (break)

Bhakti-prema: But there was no Atlantic, Pacific, Indian oceans, no. But after that, there were sixteen thousand sons of Sagara Mahārāja. Then their sacrificial hearth was stolen by Indra. So it was put somewhere in the earth folds. They began to dig the earth to find out that hearth. So they dug all the oceans . . . (indistinct) . . . Kapila Muni sitting there in the bank of the . . . in the Bay of Bengal And it explains the curse, that he is the chief. And then there's . . . (indistinct) . . . burned him to ashes.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: It says here that "Only our knowledge of the crust of the earth is based on direct observation, but studies of paths of earthquake waves . . ." Then it goes . . . the only way they can understand is by direct observation. And that's very limited. Says: "All the planets were probably formed at much the same time." It doesn't sound like they have very much knowledge, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Everything is "Probably," "maybe." Says that, "Probably all the planets were formed at much the same time from the same great dust cloud." After you create this planetarium, Śrīla Prabhupāda, they'll have to rewrite all of these books. These businesses . . .

Bhakti-prema: Another book has to be written. Its name should be Easy-to-Read Geography or Advanced Geography. And also about history we have to write. Your Divine Grace will write Advanced History, and there the complete lifetime of Manus and Indras should be given.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: According to the modern thinkers, any further back than about three or four thousand years ago, everybody was living in the caves. So they think that all of our books are mythology, some dreamt-up stories by some people a few . . .

Prabhupāda: So how they are writing of millions of years ago?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: This is all according to their mythology.

Prabhupāda: No. They are suggesting.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: And, of course, they say that there were no humans around, just dust and water and earth. There were no brains at that time.

Prabhupāda: Only brains are developed now.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yeah, especially now, this century. Before this, everybody was unintelligent, and now man's brain is developing to a higher and higher degree, and he can finally understand what is what. I don't think that . . . your descriptions, especially this planetarium, will at first meet with a lot of heavy reaction. It is not going to be embraced immediately very favorably. It means that everyone who calls himself a Ph.D. is a fool, that students will laugh at their teachers, if what we say is correct. There will be chaos in educational circles. (Prabhupāda chuckles)

Prabhupāda: All right.

Devotees: Jaya Śrīla Prabhupāda. (end)