In his very fascinating (though just a bit incomprehensible) book, Mystic Universe, Ashish Dalela outlines many very intriguing concepts. I actually really love books that are incomprehensible, so that’s not meant as a criticism – and the reason the book is quite challenging to understand is very simply that a lot of it is written from the perspective of ancient Vedic knowledge, which really isn’t easy to convey in modern, western terms we might be used to.
Sometimes understanding requires that we hop into a different time and space – a different world — and that’s not always easy to do. A world that may be truer, but that we are not familiar with.
One thought that I found quite profound is his idea about the globe and what is shown on it. When we look at a globe of the world and turn it round and round, we see continents and countries, like the United States, India, Kenya, Ecuador, the UK, Italy, Slovenia, Thailand – all kinds of countries and their capitals and major cities – all important places where people live. Well, that’s okay, but that isn’t the real globe as it really is.
The real earth is quite different and what it actually shows, in reality, is forests, rivers, oceans, mountains, deserts, lakes, plateaus, plains, and meadows. If we were to show the real earth as it really is, on every globe, then perhaps we could get our priorities straight and stop putting all that is human first – and all that is of the world of nature pretty much out of the picture altogether.
It is a fascinating concept. Of course, being human, our first thought is to think that is quite a silly idea; we feel we really do need to know where Los Angeles or Nairobi or London is – and we really do need to see a road or a flight path that will take us there. But maybe, after all, it might just be more important to see the location of the last forests on earth or the majestic mountains or the seas where the great whales swim – and then we might have a deeper understanding of where we really live – and less of an impetus to destroy the planet and more of a wish to feel a sense of love and reverence for Mother Earth.
Ashish Dalela has written many books – all fascinating. This one is Mystic Universe, An Introduction to Vedic Cosmology. It’s available on Amazon.
By Sharon St Joan
© Copyright, Sharon St Joan, 2021