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Brief info

Mysteries of the Sacred Universe
The Cosmology of the Bhagavata Purana
Richard L. Thompson

     From the flat earth to the sun’s chariot, traditional spiritual texts often seem wedded to outmoded cosmologies that show, at best, the scientific limitations of their authors. The Bhagavata Purana, one of the classical scriptures of Hinduism, seems, at first glance, to be no exception. However, a closer examination of this text reveals unexpected depths of knowledge in ancient cosmology. Mysteries of the Sacred Universe shows that the cosmology of the Bhagavata Purana is a sophisticated system, with multiple levels of meaning that encode at least four different astronomical, geographical, and spiritual world models.
      By viewing the text in the light of modern astronomy, Richard Thompson shows how ancient scientists expressed exact knowledge in apparently mythological terms. Comparison with the ancient traditions of Egypt and the Near East shows early cultural connections between India and these regions-including a surprisingly advanced science. However, quantitative science is only part of the picture. Mysteries of the Sacred Universe also offers a clear understanding of how the spiritual dimension was integrated into ancient Indian cosmology.

paperback, 375 pages, 104 illustrations, 51 tables, glossary, bibliography, and index
ISBN 0-9635309-3-3

Original English edition was published by
Govardhan Hill Publishing

Some reviews

“Mysteries of the Sacred Universe is a very original book, and it represents an important advance in the understanding of the cosmology described in the famed Bhagavata Purana of India. Thompson looks at this cosmology from several points of view and he presents a compelling case showing that this cosmology was intended to have multiple meanings that span the terrestrial, the astronomical, and the spiritual planes.”
         - Professor Subash Kak, Louisiana State University

“Thompson takes us back in time when man regarded himself an integral part of the cosmos and shows us how, in a strange way, such a system as the Bhagavatam cosmology bears an uncanny harmony with modern astronomy. More important and interesting is the way Thompson shows how the Bhagavatam literature presents visual astronomy in geographical and mythological settings which, in this respect, is very reminiscent of the Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt and many mythico-religious cosmologies of other ancient cultures of the world. . . . Gripping, scholarly and ground-breaking, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe deserves to be widely read and discussed.”
         - Robert G. Bauval, coauthor of both The Orion Mystery and The Message of the Sphinx

Mysteries of the Sacred Universe by Dr. Richard L. Thompson constitutes yet another outstanding achievement in the distinguished career of this very important scholar. At a time when a somewhat dogmatic orthodoxy tends to govern academia, Thompson displays here all the intellectual ability, academic rigor, and the personal courage and creativity necessary to produce his brilliant discovery of the modern scientific relevance of ancient, Sanskrit descriptions of the universe. The large and growing number of rational human beings who cannot accept that ancient peoples were simply less evolved versions of ourselves, will find here a treasure of hard data and masterful reasoning to the contrary.
         - Dr. Howard Resnick, Ph.D.

“Dr. Thompson has a talent that may well be unique in our times: the ability to take complex, esoteric ideas that require high level mathematics, specialized technical expertise, and a familiarity with scholarship that spans the history of civilized humanity, and presenting them to the lay reader in a narrative style that is as user-friendly as a novel, but packed with sound reasoning, solid scholarship, and impressive empirical research.”
         - Professor William W. Wall, Santa Fe Community College, Florida

“Mr. Thompson’s premise is that the system of the Bhagavatam includes some modern understandings of the science of astronomy, not just mythology. . . . If the reader can judge what is science and what is not science, putting aside the non-science aspects of the cosmology, it seems clear that there are indeed a number of references to known scientific aspects of the sky in the Bhagavatam.”
         - Jeanne E. Bishop, Planetarium Director, Westlake, Ohio

“A revolution in our understanding of the cosmology of the Puranas is in the making here. This book offers a way of reading ancient Indian texts that is profoundly interesting and that overturns a long history of scholarly undervaluation of the supposedly ‘only mythological’ contents of Puranic literature.”
         - Professor Gene R. Thursby, University of Florida

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Texts
1. 1.1 Puranas
1. 1.2 Bhagavata Purana
1. 1.3 Vishnu Purana
1. 1.4 Jyotisha Shastras
1. 1.5 Surya-siddhanta

Index

Mysteries of the Sacred Universe
INTERACTIVE CD

Richard L. Thompson

“The CD accompanying the book is also outstanding. The graphics are spellbinding.”
- Professor Subash Kak, Louisiana State University

Minimum Requirements:
Pentium 166 MHz processor
16 MB RAM
4X CD-ROM drive
sound card
640X480 display with True Color
ISBN 0-9635309-7-6

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