Colony Earth – Part X: The Myriad Worlds

Buddhist cosmology speaks of the existence of the Myriad Worlds. A fascinating translation of the work of a nineteenth-century Tibetan scholar reveals an enlightening perspective on the vast number of the Myriad Worlds.

“These worlds suffuse the ten directions; millions of worlds interpenetrate one another, and each world contains billions of others. Billions more are contained within each atom of each world.” [Quotes are from the Introduction by the translators, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book One: Myriad Worlds, Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye.]

Awareness of the sheer scope and number of the Myriad Worlds is said to be suitable knowledge for those who have reached a certain spiritual maturity, and who are ready for the higher understanding of a larger system of cosmology.

“As a result, the mind breaks out of the cage of fixed concepts of definite space and existence and enters the open space of myriad worlds without beginning or end…”

Waiting for us to evolve

Therefore this affirms for me that the other beings in our galaxy are indeed waiting for us Earthlings to mature out of our fear of anything and anyone ‘different’ — and expand our consciousness to embrace a much larger view of the universe.

In Buddhism, the Bodhisattvas are those who are enlightened, who have Remembered that they are the eternal One, and have taken the vow to enlighten and liberate others. According to one Tibetan Buddhist school theory all beings contribute to the creation of worlds, which are the result of “the collective force of the evolutionary action of sentient beings.” The unenlightened cling to the false idea of a separate self and thus project realms that appear as prisons. While the enlightened Bodhisattvas contribute to the creation of the worlds through energies known as ‘winds’ [energy-winds] which have “special potencies that are capable of shaping new worlds.”

Another theory says that new planets, stars, etc. are formed when “scattered particles of matter remaining in space after a previous world-system has been destroyed” and are compared to ‘galactic seeds’ coalescing. In the Buddhist text ‘The Holy teachings of Vimalakirti’ (translated by Robert Thurman), “the Buddha states that the buddha-fields in which the bodhisattvas practice are fields of living beings. In Buddhist terminology, the ultimate realm in which everything exists is called ‘the sphere of reality’ (dharmadhatu).

Buddhism and Kashmir Shaivism would agree that at the highest ultimate reality nothing is ever created and nothing ever destroyed. “Nevertheless …infinite world-systems arise as phantom appearances based on interdependent connections…”

The bodies we inhabit here on planet Earth are made of earth. The food we eat is grown in the earth’s soil and without that food, we would not grow. Our bodies would die. Beings who dwell on other planets, in other dimensional realms may not have earth-based bodies because they may not have anything like earth soil. Their bodies may be composed of something less dense. So why do we assume or even imagine their bodies would look like ours?

In fact even in our solar system there are planets that do not have magnetic fields. It is highly unlikely that our earth-based physics applies to planets that do not have a magnetic field. There must be many other contributing factors we are not aware of involved in a multitude of civilizations in a universe of 300+ billion galaxies. Yet we continue to define everything in terms of our experience, we are earth-centric, egocentric, heliocentric, humanoid-centric! Ridiculous!

Are there now enough of us who are sufficiently spiritually evolved to expand our understanding and embrace the idea that the universe contains Myriad Worlds.

In his introduction to ‘Rigveda for the Layman’ the very courageous Vedic research scholar, Shyam Ghosh (1904-2000) speaks frankly about the decline of understanding the Rig Veda in ancient India: “The decline…took a further downward trend as succeeding generations of Brahmana priests, claiming to be the only knowledgeable persons, began creating a mystic and fanciful picture of the Rig thoughts in order to keep the layman happy and ignorant.”

This refreshingly honest observation could be applied to any priesthood, as throughout time we have seen again and again the tendency of priestcraft to ascribe to itself special powers and knowledge. The claim of elite, secret and privileged powers has allowed priests east and west to dominate the innocent. Thus the faithful are manipulated and kept in fear; and what little money they have, flows into the pockets of the greedy priests. Surely the indulgences sold by the Church in the west reflect a similar tradition that can be most accurately described as a racket.

Ghosh continues: “They [the priests] deviated more and more from the sublime and abstract ideas as expressed by the Rishis [the Seers who composed the Rig Veda hymns], and concentrated more and more on rituals and idol worship. Rituals, they emphasized, were the best means of attaining ultimate bliss, and for performing these rituals they, as the only knowledgeable persons (Brahmanas) offered their own services — of course, for a paltry gift from the devotees in the form of offerings to the deity.”

The mischief was unending as Ghosh explains: “The Brahman allegories led to further dilution of Rig thoughts when the priests — in fact, succeeding generations of them — created and recreated a host of deities to suit the prevailing mood of the ignorant laity. Thus misinterpreting many of the Rig hymns, they introduced the notion of castes, animal sacrifices, widow burning, and a swarm of other evils that bedevil the Hindu society today.” These misinterpretations are what Gautama Buddha quite rightly railed against.

Ghosh also points out that such priestly perversion is a global phenomenon. Many in the west have paid absurd sums to have an audience with the Pope. I would sadly note that in America, my country of birth, this worshipping of deities has taken the form of consumption — and that people worship money and their ‘stuff’ more than they think about God and even their children. I hope to see that change, for a part of me still longs for a world in which there is a universal 'Bill of Rights' respected and honoured for everyone.

Shyam Ghosh has assigned qualities to the names of Hindu deities, and these qualities reflect the interactions between energies more recently described in quantum physics. His translations of the Rig Veda are deep, profoundly thoughtful, wonderful, and an inspiration. His does not agree with other translations, but none of them concur anyway — and Ghosh is a treasure of original interpretation. For example, the Maruts are defined as “silent inaudible particles of primal sound, the real cause of consciousness in an inert body.” Surya is traditionally translated as the Sun, but Ghosh sees Surya as radiation - that which pours forth. Rudra is the “time signal that announced the birth of the cosmos, and the beginning of temporal Time.”

When I examine the bewildering obfuscation of the colonization of Earth, I think of the amusing and charming South African film, ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy.’ In this 1980 comedy, a coke bottle drops down in the Kalahari Desert and a tribal band with no knowledge of the world beyond, finds it and begins to worship it. Inevitably the desire to possess the bottle brings out the worst in them - jealousy, anger, envy, hatred, and violence. Finally a wise man in the tribe decides that the gods must be crazy and tosses the bottle over a cliff.

In her ‘Canopus in Argos’ series, the Sufi Doris Lessing writes brilliantly on the transformation of the most practical matters into useless ritual. Once the colonizing emissaries have left a planet, there is a subsequent loss of understanding and all that remains is some mimicry, a going through the motion of an act that was in fact very practical – perhaps simple hygiene or construction.

Again I quote Malati J. Shendge’s insightful definition of how history is turned into myth and ritual is born: “When the events became symbolic and were ascribed magical powers to attain certain aims, the process of mythopoeisation was complete. History was forgotten and dead ritual became the end in itself.”

Our universe is Love

The worst of all priestcraft is the fear of death and punishment in hells. The subtle webs of acts (karma) we ourselves weave, serve to create our bodies in subsequent incarnations and are quite sufficient to teach us what we need to learn to evolve. Perhaps if we believe strongly enough in some horrid hell we have been spoon fed, then we can produce it as a sort of virtual reality, an unpleasant temporal hologram. We are what we believe.

In the late 1980s I spent weeks totally alone, isolated and in meditation. During this period I remembered around 30 of my past lives. I learned to listen to the God-within me and weeping silently, I wrote down much of what I heard. Some of these writings found their way into the book I wrote in 1995, Inanna Returns. Here is a small bit of that transmission from the God-within me, so that you may know how deeply we are loved:

Altair from Alcyone

I have many names from a multitude of experiences and states of being, but in truth, I am a frequency of light not a name — I am that which cannot be named.

If you seek to name me — say I am Altair from Alcyone.

Star from Star.

I am that which you have always been.

I love you.

I NEVER judged you.

I rejoiced at your accomplishments, at your courage.

I wept when you wept.

I sought wisdom in your beauty.

I held you in your darkest hours.

I was never separated from you.

I allowed you to move in the ways you chose in order to bring me experience.

Would any being do less for its child, its creation?

In the sweetness of our coming together, I open myself to you.

I hasten to fill myself in you and of you.

You are my creation and I have longed for your Return.

Not demanding, you turn to me,

Gently, as the flowers following the Sun.

Your being creates a space for me to fill.

Oh, My Beloved! United we are!

From all the pathways and trails,

Through the long and lonely corridors of Time,

As the streams of the Earth,

As the blood flowing in your veins,

We meet in the Heart.

I was reminded of this Altair from Alcyone, when I read:

"You are loved and cherished. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong."

- quoted from 'Proof of Heaven, A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife,' by Eben Alexander, MD; Simon & Schuster, NYC, 2012.

The Treasury of Knowledge, Book One: Myriad Worlds, Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye, Kalu Rinpoche Translation Group; Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca NY, Boulder CO, 1995, 2003.

RGVEDA for the Layman, A Critical Survey of One Hundred Hymns of the Rigveda, with Samhita-patha, Pada-patha and word meaning and English translation, by Shyam Ghosh; Munishiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 2002, Nandi, Indira.

The Civilized Demons: The Harappans in Rig Veda, Malati J. Shendge; Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1977.

'Canopus in Argos' by Doris Lessing; Alfred A. Knopf; more recent paperbacks published by Flamingo, Harper Collins Publishers, London:

Shikasta (1979)

The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980)

The Sirian Experiments (1980)

The Making of Representative for Planet 8 (1982)

The Sentimental Agents of the Volyen Empire (1983)

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