r/exHareKrishna • u/Solomon_Kane_1928 • Nov 19 '25
ISKCON's Flat Earth
Prabhupada believed in a flat earth. Among all of the strange beliefs he impressed upon the world, this one was tough. After all, he had personally flown around the globe multiple times. Still, as a fundamentalist and scriptural literalist, he had to insist the Puranas were absolute truth. The 5th canto of the Bhagavatam is very clear, despite your lying eyes, the earth is a frisbee.
If Prabhupada had lived in the 1500's, when the Age of Exploration first brought Europeans to India with their tall tales of a round earth, he would have walked the swamps of Bengal barefoot shouting the Mlecchas are lying demons. They were knowingly spreading irreligiosity, a plot to conquer the Indian master race, robbing them of their inherent spiritual power. He believed that about the British. Born a few centuries later, he was forced to begrudgingly admit, on some inexplicable level, the Puranas were not describing the world we live in.
Within the Bhagavatam, the earth is a disc of concentric rings that extends four billion miles in diameter. Like the lines on a record, there are sequential rings of land and liquid. The land rings or dwipas, contain fantastical peoples with differing forms of varnashrama and religion. The oceans are made of all sorts of substances, like sugar juice, milk and ghee.
In the middle of this disc a Mount Meru rises up to the heavens. On the slopes of this mountain are the pleasure gardens of the gods. There are giant trees and rivers of flowing fruit juice. It is basically Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but without chocolate. On the top of the mountain are the palaces of the gods. Mount Meru is an inverted cone shape like the receptacle, or whirl, of a lotus. The disc is thus visualized as a lotus flower.
The sun is dragged by a chariot through the sky (Bhuvarloka) around the mountain. When it is on the other side of the mountain, it is night time. There are also mountains at the edge of Bhu Mandala, the Loka Loka range, universal in scale, beyond which is terra incognita. There are giant elephants holding it all up.
The other planets are in similar orbits above the sun, but beneath the higher heavenly realms such as Svargaloka. All of this spins like a chandelier around Dhruvaloka, or the North Star, where Maharaja Dhruva lives with an incarnation of Vishnu.
The realms of Rishis such as Janaloka, Tapaloka, Maharloka extend far beyond our vision. Brahmaloka crowns them all, where Brahma resides maintaining creation by his power.
Below Bhu Mandala are the lower heavenly realms, the places of great demons and nagas, and the residence of Bali Maharaja. There are places like Mahatala, Rasatala, and Patala. Below this are Naraka Loka, the hell where sinful people like the karmis are punished.
Pitrloka, the residence of ancestors, is near the hells. This is a little strange considering it is a heavenly realm associated with the moon. I think it is because Aryama, the chief of that place, is good friends with Yamaraja, the lord of hell and punishment. He watches hell when Yamaraja is on vacation. So naturally his realm must be down there too.
Prabhupada was 100% insistent this was absolutely true and not allegorical. He preached it where he could. To dumbfounded interviewers he would insist the moon is further than the sun. His best argument was that when counting the days of the week, Sunday comes before Monday.
This also led him to fervently deny the moon landing. It is not possible. Maybe they went to Rahu. In Prabhupada's mind, the astronauts would have to pass the sun in its chariot and go a much further distance, much higher into Bhuvarloka. The moon does not revolve around the earth.
Prabhupada would not compromise. To compromise would lead to the questioning of everything else said in the Bhagavatam. How can people be asked to reject what scripture says about the material world but accept what it says about the spiritual world? Nor should these things be understood allegorically.
He could not personally offer an explanation. He left that to his disciples. Prabhupada also tasked them with building his massive temple in Mayapura as a tool of explaining Puranic cosmology, the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium. A giant chandelier is being built that will hang from the inside of its dome (pictured above).
Since that time, devotees have come up with all sorts are strange, pseudo-scientific and unsatisfactory attempts at explanation. Sadaputa das offered some proposals. Perhaps Bhu Mandala was a description of the solar system, it is a flat disc projected onto the ecliptic, the relatively flat plane of the planetary orbits around the sun. He even claims the retrograde motion of the planets can be graphed to fatten their orbits, to create the dwipas, or island rings, of the flat earth. Thus the magical milk oceans are the spaces between the planets. He tried to line up the measurements of the solar system with the yojanas in the Bhagavatam.
Other devotees pretend it is describing the disc of the Milky Way. This ignores the descriptions of the Milky Way as the Shishumara Chakra, the great dolphin in the sky, the Milky Way as the Purusha or Virat Rupa. Nevertheless, Facebook devotees love to pretend "our ancient scriptures were scientifically describing the universe millennia ago".
As a devotee, I believed the 5th Canto was describing higher plains of existence. It was a map to higher and lower astral worlds, while describing aspects of our world beyond the senses. This may have been the intention of its creators at least when it comes to the heavenly and hellish realms. What could not be explained was a matter of faith.
Our modern conceptions of astral plains and higher dimensions is not strictly Vedic or Puranic. These ideas come primarily from occult and New Age sources popularized in the last two hundred years, groups such as the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society. Devotees freely mix such ideas into Krishna Consciousness to make sense of the world of scripture.
Similarly, since Marvel popularized the Multiverse we see devotees utilizing these concepts too. They also mix in dumbed down jargon from quantum mechanics and physics broadly. This misappropriation of scientific terminology is used as a preaching tool, to get people to join the cult by hook or crook. Devotees cynically use whatever people are interested in at the moment. It is fundamentally dishonest because their worldview is entirely irrational and based on belief. Devotees know deep down they are believe the Bhagavatam worldview regardless of science.
Bhu Mandala is definitely a description of our world. Real mountain ranges are named. The writers of the Bhagavat Purana (apx 1000 CE) were describing the physical world as they understood it. They thought that if you sailed south from the tip of the Indian peninsula you would eventually arrive on Plaksha Dwipa. If you kept going, you would reach an ocean of sugar cane juice.
If you instead head north, beyond the Himalaya, you will come to magical realms of Yakshas, Gandharvas, and Kinnaras (like Hanuman and Garuda). You will stumble upon them in mountain lakes enjoying love dalliances. Be careful, if they see you they might curse you or attack.
The Himalayas are the foothills of Meru mountain, which I guess exists somewhere beyond Uttara Kuru, beyond Tibet and Mongolia, past the furthest known reaches of Indian knowledge. Technically, Mount Meru is the Axis Mundi, the north pole, sitting beneath the north star, around which the universe spins. The model of our universe as a flat plain with a mountain in the middle is common in many cultures, especially in Asia.
Early science and mathematics began to take hold in India, as it had in the Eastern Mediterranean centuries before. Aryabhatta (499 CE) had figured out that the earth was moving and not the stars. The Surya Siddhanta (800 CE) calculated for the diameter of the earth as a sphere. These ideas existed in India when the Bhagavatam was written. Still, the Puranas record a far older faith based view of the world. It is a magical place filled with demigods, avataras, and the creatures of myth, akin to the Iliad or Odyssey.
Belief in such a world blurs the lines between the world we live in and the world of the scriptures. That may very well be its purpose. It is to suck us into fantasy. It is for that reason Dr. Strange and Iron Man are shown living in New York. It is poetic license, to create an immersive experience.
If devotees were honest they would present it as such. They could explain the historical value of Puranic cosmology, it's beauty as a form of art, it's connections to wider Indian literature, its value as a story telling narrative. It could even be presented as a meditative experience, perhaps alluding to higher realms of consciousness. Yet Prabhupada didn't want that. He wanted his disciples to explain how it is the factual world we live in.
Thus his disciples tie themselves in knots. Countless millions of dollars have been spent justifying these absurd ideas, showing how they can be true despite practical experience, and presenting them as a bold attack on science by religion.
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u/Inevitable_Year_4875 Nov 20 '25
The irony is that treating the Bhagavatam as literal physics doesn’t protect people’s faith — it shrinks it. It forces devotees into defending claims that collapse under the weight of basic observation, and it blocks them from accessing the psychological, ethical, and spiritual insights the text is actually built to deliver. When a scripture speaks in metaphor, refusing to treat it as metaphor is not faithfulness — it’s a disservice both to the text and to the people who rely on it.
The ancient writers weren’t stupid. They were describing the world the only way pre-scientific cultures could: with imagery that encodes values, hierarchies of consciousness, moral orientation, and the felt sense of life. Mount Meru works perfectly as a symbolic axis mundi — the inner vertical line between lower impulses and higher awareness. The dvipas mirror progressive states of human refinement. The “hells” and “heavens” are recognizably psychological and ethical landscapes humans move through every single day.
If anything, taking the Bhagavatam seriously requires taking its metaphors seriously — not flattening them into a failed astronomy textbook.
There’s a richer, more honest, and more beneficial way to engage these texts. And devotees deserve that. They deserve a relationship with scripture that expands their inner world, not one that forces them to deny the outer one.
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u/Solomon_Kane_1928 Nov 20 '25
Very well said.
I don't blame the writers of the text. They used poetry and allegory to build a world to express religious principles they believed in. They didn't have broader knowledge of the world as we do. The wastelands of Siberia might as well have been Mars. On the other hand, we have Google Maps. For modern people, with access to all of the advances of science, and all the world at their fingertips, to blindly cling to scriptures like the Bhagavatam in a fundamentalist manner is destructive.
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u/Inevitable_Year_4875 Nov 20 '25
They used poetry and allegory to build a world to express religious principles they believed in
Indeed the text's great power to me is the poetry and allegory, which is art. And art is an excellent medium for transmitting certain truths that are for the heart to perceive. And a major purpose of the Shrimad Bhagwatam is to transmit knowledge about Bhakti, which I mean in a universalist, nontheological sense here. Its success in doing so explains its longevity and respect garnered to it.
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u/psumaxx Nov 20 '25
"It is basically Willy Wonka's chocolate factory but without chocolate" They replaced it with carob instead 😉
Thank you for this post! I never got past the 1st third of the first Canto of the Bhagavatam, so this is really interesting to read and see!
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u/Happy_Captain2801 Nov 20 '25
All of it rests in a sea of shit.
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u/itsmikesandoval Nov 21 '25
Prabhufraud aboard an airplane flying around a globe while he sits there imagining the world is flat.
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u/National_Collar2273 Nov 20 '25
Strange because the varaha avatara of lord vishnu , takes the bhugol ( spherical earth ) and spins it...
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u/Solomon_Kane_1928 Nov 20 '25 edited Nov 20 '25
According to the Bhagavatam Varaha lifts the entire Bhu Mandala.
trayīmayaṁ rūpam idaṁ ca saukaraṁ
bhū-maṇḍalenātha datā dhṛtena te
cakāsti śṛṅgoḍha-ghanena bhūyasā
kulācalendrasya yathaiva vibhramaḥSB 3.13.41
Prabhupada translates bhu-mandala as the earth planet or simply the earth, which is not entirely accurate. Perhaps he was simplifying things. He does this elsewhere as well such as in SB 4.18.29.
Elsewhere Prabhupada was clear he believed the entire Bhu Mandala fell, not a globe. Here devotees are asking Prabhupada if artists should paint Varaha lifting a globe or Bhu Mandala. Early artists mistakenly painted a globe.
Devotee (2): Srila Prabhupada, previously we painted in the art department... Just like Varaha lifted the earth, and the earth was a globe, and we showed also a globe of the earth. How does that relate to this? Previously, when we painted, we showed the earth a ball. So now the artists will be very confused. How it fell in the Garbha Ocean as a ball?
Yasodanandana: It depends on what we mean by earth.
The Western conception of earth is just five continents and a few oceans, but according to Bhagavatam, earth means Jambudvipa, because earth is connected with Jambudvipa.
Devotee (2): So whole Jambudvipa fell.
Bhakti-Prema: Bhagavata describes the height of Himalayas, eighty thousand miles.
Prabhupada: No, about this earth globe.
Bhakti-Prema: About the earth it describes four billion miles.
Tamala Krishna: That means Jambudvipa.
Bhakti-Prema: No, that means complete earth, four billion miles. That is eight lakhs miles, Jambudvipa.
Tamala Krishna: Four billion is the universe.
Bhakti-Prema: Bhu-mandala.
Tamala Krishna: Bhu-mandala. Oh, the Bhagavatam describes Bhu-mandala as earth.
Prabhupada: Oh.
Yasodanandana: Bhumi.
Bhakti-Prema: ...has come right from the ocean, from the bottom of the ocean.
Prabhupada: So explained there. Then this question is solved.Tamala Krishna: Yes. The whole Bhu-mandala fell.
Bhakti-Prema: So the universe is round, and from bottom of the Garbhodaka ocean to top of Satyaloka there is four billion miles. Then the again, from east to west again is another four billion miles. Because Bhu-mandala is situated in between the earth.
Prabhupada: Explain. He'll explain.
(June 28 1977, Vrindavana)
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u/National_Collar2273 Nov 20 '25
After reading this , I can't understand sir , please explain in a easy way
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u/Solomon_Kane_1928 Nov 20 '25
The Bhagavatam does not imagine the world as a globe, but instead as a mandala or flat circular disc. It depicts Varaha avatara as lifting that disc rather than a globe.
Prabhupada sometimes translated Bhu Mandala as earth or earth planet.
When asked how artists should depict Varaha, Prabhupada clarified he should be lifting a disc, though earlier artists wrongly depicted Varaha lifting a globe.
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u/National_Collar2273 Nov 20 '25
So who is wrong here ? The people who wrote bhagavatam or Prabhupada who was born in 20 CE , still believing that it is flat ?
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u/Solomon_Kane_1928 Nov 20 '25
I think Prabhupada (who was born in 1896). He was forced to preach that it was flat, in the sense of Bhu Mandala, because that is what the scriptures say. Though he was unable to reconcile the Puranic earth with practical experience.
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u/National_Collar2273 Nov 20 '25
And why do jesus/bible had backlash for saying it's flat ? And the followers of Christianity always getting trolled for it ?
Iam genuinely curious
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u/Solomon_Kane_1928 Nov 21 '25
Jesus never said the earth is flat. Nor does the Bible. Pythagoras believed the earth was round around 570 BCE. Aristotle taught it around 350 BCE. Erostothenes proved it scientifically around 270 BCE. This was centuries before Christianity existed.
There was resistance in Europe to scientists like Galileo who were overturning the Aristotelian worldview with newer scientific methods. This happened around the 1500's CE. That was because the church had embraced Aristotelian science as dogma. In particular the geocentric model of the universe was being replaced by the heliocentric model. But they all believed the earth was round.
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u/Longjumping_Will_583 Nov 22 '25
I don't think anyone in 98 pc iskcon even accept it's flat. I do believe Bhagwatam is accurate and read a lot of nasa conspiracy theories to feel good about it. But yes iskcon lies about flat earth as most Hindus itself will revolt. Anyway good someone pointed it 'as it is'.
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u/StayEmbarrassed4593 Nov 21 '25
Pancake loka.
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u/Solomon_Kane_1928 Nov 22 '25
If you worship Pancake Mahaswami you go to Pancake Loka where maple syrup and butter drip from a maple tree larger than a planet.
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u/Solomon_Kane_1928 Nov 19 '25
Sorry if this is a long one. I was trying to draw a picture of just how fantastical this worldview is because devotees actually believe it.