A Reply to Bhakta Yarek

BY: MAYESVARA DASA

Jan 24, 2018 — IRELAND (SUN) — The following is a short reply to Bhakta Yarek's "MA in Avidya".

First of all, thank you Bhakta Yarek for engaging in the discussion about the nature of the Earth. As promised previously to Sadhusanga dasa, I am presently writing a paper on Srila Prabhupada's Statements about flat Earth—one of which you have quoted in your article. I hope you will be patient and wait until I can make a more detailed reply to your particular quotation.

I wish to briefly address here the issue of devotees presenting Srila Prabhupada's mostly negative statements about the flat Earth idea as evidence from an acharya that the Earth is not flat, but is indeed a globe-shaped planet floating in space as commonly accepted. In the coming papers we will go through these various statements and discuss them in the specific context of the conversations or lectures in which they appear, as well as in the general context of Srimad Bhagavatam's own description of the Earth as a massive circular plane. We will present the argument that although Srila Prabhupada spoke negatively of the flat Earth idea, such statements were made not in response to Srimad Bhagavatam's original conception of the Earth circle, but merely in response to some common-held notions of a flat-Earth. In our previous papers we have presented evidence that the Bhu-mandala concept had not been exactly clear by the time of Srila Prabhupada's departure in November 1977 (indeed, to this day the nature of Bhu-mandala is still problematic). Since no detailed case for the Srimad Bhagavatam's flat Earth conception was ever presented to Srila Prabhupada, we can't say that it is a conception that he absolutely rejected.

In the few scattered statements that Srila Prabhupada made about the flat Earth idea, he is simply making brief remarks to a conception of the flat-Earth that obviously has nothing in common with what Srimad Bhagavatam describes to be the situation of the Earth. In other words, when we look at the context, Srila Prabhupada's negative statements about the flat-Earth idea were not made in response to any of the many articulate arguments that can be presented to demonstrate how the Earth is factually situated on a stationary horizontal plane. It can also be seen from the context that Srila Prabhupada is not responding to the many articulate arguments that can be made against the science that supposedly supports the globe idea. In the examples that we will look at in the coming papers, Srila Prabhupada only rejects the somewhat comical notion of the flat-Earth that must have been presented to him at some point in his life (perhaps in school or via some other media source).

Prabhupada: Bible, they say that the earth is square. So nobody is believing. So one point is sufficient, that it is not perfect. One point is sufficient.

Harikesa: (laughing) It says the earth is square?

Prabhupada: Yes, they… They say it. Formerly they believed that.

Pushta Krishna: Probably does.

Harikesa: Oh, you mean flat.

Prabhupada: You'll fall down. If you go very far, you'll fall down. Just like a child thinks. Bible, so many have been proved not authorized. Therefore Bible is not authorized.
(Morning Walk, October 13, 1975, Durban)

Some devotees have been presenting statements such as the above as evidence that Srila Prabhupada rejected the flat-Earth concept; but these devotees do not ask the relevant question: what was Srila Prabhupada's idea of flat Earth, and does that idea have any comparison to the Srimad Bhagavatam's description of the Bhu-mandala? From the above statement it is apparent that Srila Prabhupada's conception of the flat Earth was an idea common to most people—a landscape that ends with ships falling off the edge...

This idea of ships falling off a flat Earth is far from the Srimad Bhagavatam's conception of a continual Earth plane. The Srimad Bhagavatam's conception is that our own Earth area is just a small part of an Earth plane that expands to a diameter of 4 billion miles and ends close to the shell of the universe. Our salt water oceans, for example, are just a small part of the greater salt water ocean described in Srimad Bhagavatam as continuing for another 800,000 miles. If one could cross the great salt water ocean, one would not fall off the edge, but instead come to another island that is 1,600,000 miles across. After crossing that island one come to another ocean which is of the same breadth. In this way, one would cross seven successive islands and oceans that keep doubling in size for a measurement of 200 million miles. These seven islands and oceans are in the unique formation of concentric circles and form the inhabited area of the Earth.

After the seven islands and oceans there are other features of the Earth such as the colossal Lokaloka Mountain, and then aloka-varsha that continues to the edge of the universe. The shell of the universe is globe-shaped or more specifically egg-shaped (anda) and encloses everything within it. The universe is not an undefined infinite space as presented by modern scientists. The universe is spherical and has a diameter of 4 billion miles. The Earth plane crosses the center of the universe and is just short of 4 billion miles. In short, there is no question of anyone falling off the edge of the Earth!

This great Earth circle is held from beneath by Ananta-sesha. Because the Earth is held by Ananta-sesha, it is an exception to the other planets and luminaries that float and rotate above the great Earth plane by the power of Vayu. All these details present insurmountable evidence that the Earth in Srimad Bhagavatam is described as a great circular disc and not a small globe-shaped planet floating in space.

So let us just appreciate for the moment that Srila Prabhupada's idea of the flat Earth with ships falling off the edge is clearly not the idea of the Earth described by Sukadeva Goswami. Most people's conception of flat Earth is something like this—a flat version of the Earth-globe floating in space:

According to Srimad Bhagavatam, our area of the Earth is neither floating, nor surrounded by space as in the image above; rather, it is surrounded by other areas of the greater Earth. Unfortunately we don't have an adequate image that shows a detail of our known continents in relation to it's surrounding area, but the continents of our known Earth are somewhere in the area of Bharata-varsha which is located near the center of the Earth on a massive circular island called Jambudwipa:

According to this description, the oceans of our known Earth area should lead into other parts of the salt-water ocean. To the north of our known Earth in Bharata-varsha is the mainland of Jambudwipa. The Vedic history tells us that only 5,000 years ago, Yudhisthira was Emperor of this massive 800,000 mile super-continent. Since Bharata-varsha is simply one region of this massive area, it is certainly on the same plane as the rest of Jambudwipa, and not a separate planet in space. It appears that the residents of Bharata-varsha simply got quarantined from the rest of Jambudwipa when Kali-yuga began.

In a coming paper we will look at the details and context of this important conversation presented by Bhakta Yarek as it forms one of three main discussions on Bhu-mandala (July 2-5, 1977).

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