Sri Lanka: Gateway to Other Worlds?

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Sri Lanka: Gateway to Other Worlds?

 

Scientists re-examine legends of Serendip

 

Ongoing space research shares much in common with recent investigations

studying the basis for Lanka’s ancient reputation as a gateway between

worlds. The implications, researchers say, could be enormous.

 

This article was written to commemorate Sri Lanka’s contribution to

worldwide functions marking 1992 as the International Space Year.

 

Patrick Harrigan, M.A., studied astronomy at the University of Michigan

before entering the field of South Asia studies. He now serves as acting

editor of the Kataragama Research Publications Project.

 

Not only is the universe more complex than we ever thought, it is far

more mysterious and magical than we ever believed. -- American physicist

Dr. Fred Alan Wolf

 

Instantaneous transport between worlds, once the stuff of science

fiction and long a favorite theme of lore and legend would ever dare to

imagine, according to a growing consensus of researchers in the rapidly

emerging field of parallel universe theory. Now scientific interest

appears to be focusing upon Sri Lanka’s living tradition of cosmography

or sacred geography the understanding of which could lead to discoveries

that are literally out of this world.

 

Theoretical physicists, backed by recent findings in the field of radio

astronomy, are suggesting that the visible universe as we see it may in

fact consist of multiple overlapping universes that are dependently

inter-related in some yet unknown way. They point, for instance, to

recent calculations indicating that nine-tenths of the universe’s

postulated mass may consist of 'dark matter' that is yet undetected and

unaccounted for -- a disturbing fact to astrophysicists that is neatly

explainable in terms of parallel universe theory.

 

Not only is the universe more complex than we ever thought. It is far

more mysterious and magical than we ever believed," argues Dr. Fred Alan

Wolf, theoretical physicist and author of Parallel Universes: The Search

for Other Worlds, adding that I now see the universe as a gigantic

magical mystery tour, far in excess of the Beatles’ verses.

 

Simplicity

 

One of the hidden axioms of physics," Dr.Wolf observes, "is that

beneath everything lies simplicity. Whatever secrets lie in store for

the discoverers of the universe’s laws, those secrets will be simple

ones."

 

Following similar clues, researchers in other field have been turning

to Lanka’s living traditions for help in understanding persistent

assertions that whole world-systems may arise solely from activities of

the mind. Accordingly, many believe that Buddhist ontology may also find

a place in the development of parallel universe theory in surprising

ways. Still no one, scientist or yogi, has ventured to predict the shape

of things to come, but already some startling implications are beginning

to come to light.

 

Anticipating a day when mankind may be able to peer across into

parallel worlds, some researchers have already begun to reckon with the

possibility that older forms of intelligent life may have long ago

employed elegantly sophisticated means of transport to visit worlds such

as our own. Indeed, they say, it is a sobering thought to consider that

any truly higher intelligence would almost certainly find us long before

we could detect it. And yet longstanding oral, written and performative

traditions from the world over, including Lanka, suggest that their

hunch is correct.

 

Intelligent life

 

Not by defying laws of nature but by comprehending them, intelligent

life from other worlds may have already had frequent contact with earth

without ever resorting to crude mechanical means of transport. Like

ancient mariners of earth, truly intelligent beings may have long ago

discovered more efficient means of traversing space, if not time as

well. Even now a high-stakes scientific race is on not to fly to the

moon or Mars, but to explore the universe’s deepest secrets right here

on earth.

 

Long before modern scientist ever dreamed of the existence of gateways

between parallel universes, the ancient world already regarded Lanka or

Serendip as being the Antipodes, a topsy-turvy wonderland inhabited by

nagas, yakas and various other-worldly spirits. Oral traditions still

current in Lanka tell of hidden gateways situated islandwide through

which yogis and siddhas, including Lord Buddha and His assembly of

arahats, could travel to distant places or even to other lokas or worlds

in the blink of an eye, reputedly through sheer comprehension alone.

 

Similarly, the nagas and other fairytale spirits may some day be

understood as intelligent visitors from other lokas, exactly as Sri

Lankan traditions have long maintained. Even Father Adam of Christian

and Islamic tradition is said to have descended from paradise to earth

upon Adam’s Peak, a major focal point of sacred power or shakti in Lanka

to this day.

 

Lanka’s longstanding reputation as a mysterious gateway to other worlds

has been testified to in modern times also by the great pioneer of

dream-related psychology, Dr. Carl G. Jung. In Memories, Dreams and

Reflections, Jung recorded his own experience of an intensely vivid

post-anesthesia dream in which he suddenly found himself floating in

space hundreds of miles above the earth’s surface. He especially

recalled seeing the island of Ceylon directly beneath him like a vast

emerald in the shimmering blue Indian Ocean.

 

Looking upward, Jung beheld a dark temple-like structure which he felt

drawn to enter. When he felt that he had passed out of this world and

into a higher one of sacred knowledge and superhuman wisdom.

 

Space Odyssey

 

Dr. Jung’s prophetic dream of a mysterious ‘gateway to heaven’ and its

explicit association with island Lanka may not have been sheer

coincidence. By the 1960’s, other scientific visionaries like Dr. Arthur

C. Clarke were developing the same essential theme there in Sri Lanka

such that it is clearly identifiable in the science fiction film classic

2001: A Space Odyssey. Subsequent writings of Dr. Clarke also suggest

that he has drawn ample inspiration from oral traditions that portray

Lanka as an ancient spaceport of sorts between parallel worlds.

 

Even in the 1990’s encounters with protean forms of intelligent life

are still believed to be fairly common in Sri Lanka, especially among

experienced mediators, practicing shamans and other traditional

specialists, who insist that such gateways are mind-made but

functionally real nonetheless. Their extraordinary claims, while

admittedly difficult to verify, fully deserve closer scientific scrutiny

and, indeed, already advanced research is being conducted that may

settle many questions once and for all.

 

This often whimsical association of island Serendip or Lanka with the

search for intelligent life is perhaps nowhere better exemplified than

at the University of California, Berkeley, where astronomers using the

world’s largest radio telescope to scan the sky for possible signals

from deep space are calling their project SERENDIP (Search for

Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent

Population).

 

Black Holes

 

Not to be outdone, however, psychophysiologists at nearby Stanford

University’s sleep Research center under Dr. Stephen LaBerge and at

other centers around the world have been achieving stunning

breakthroughs in the exploration of inner space that may revolutionize

space travel in years to come. By employing a common yogic practice

known as lucid dreaming, they have been monitoring and recording the

neuro-motor activity of sleeping human subjects who have learned how to

recover full waking consciousness even as dreams are yet in progress.

The technique, whereby a dreamer may creatively interact with

mind-generated virtual reality, has long been used to explore the subtle

dimensions of Lanka’s living traditions.

 

Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen were the first modern theorists to

posit bridges gateways crossing time and space in the vicinity of

intense gravitational distortions -- possibly even rips in the

space-time continuum. Called Einstein-Rosen Bridges, they are suspected

of connecting parallel universes, especially in the vicinity of black

holes or gravitational sinkholes that result when a massive star’s core

has collapsed.

 

Researchers exploring ways of mapping the contours of present-day

Lanka’s geographical sites of intense sacred power have been using the

black holes predicted by physicists as analogs to describe these

hierophanies. Hierophanies here on the earth’s surface may be expected

to serve analogous functions as well. Instantaneous transport between

lokas, for instance, could turn out to be more than mere fairy tales.

 

Ironically, modern science seems to know more about events in deep

space than about equally mysterious hierophanies right here on earth.

And yet, by applying findings from fields as diverse as astrophysics and

dream psychology, researchers hope to penetrate deeper than ever before

into sacred invisible realms governed by wonderfully simple principles.

 

Mankind, in other words, may today be standing at the threshold of

discoveries having the most profound and far reaching consequences.

 

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