Enoch and the Return of the Gods by Erich von Däniken

Author:Erich von Däniken
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633412439
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

The Gods in their flying palaces in the skies of ancient India

There is a distinct difference between the Jains' expectations of the return of the gods, and those of Christians, Muslims, or Jews. The latter believe that a messiah and highest judge will appear, after which the faithful will enjoy heavenly glory while the unfaithful roast in hell. The Jains do not expect a single savior, but several at once. The prophets, or tirthamkaras, continually return at every epoch. There is no final end of the world after their appearance—not heavenly joy and ambrosia, nor eternal damnation either—but simply a new act in the drama of the universe. The tirthamkaras are less saviors than helpers. They prepare human beings for the next stage and epoch. That is why they are born as human beings (think of the “son of man” in the prophesies of Enoch); but their substance, their karmic knowledge, derives from the universe. Not earthly but extraterrestrial forces plant the seed or the embryo into the womb. It is also worth remembering that these ideas were current centuries, if not millennia, before the birth of Christ, and that the Jains can therefore hardly have taken the immaculate conception from Christianity—rather the other way around!

It is not surprising if such cosmic teachers as the tirthamkaras were well versed in astronomy and astrophysics. It is from such a source that the Jains derived their—to us incomprehensible—astronomical dates. Their teachings show that they were able to measure the dimensions of the universe. Their unit of measurement was the rajju—the distance which God flies in six months, when he travels at 2,057,152 yojanas a second.

The Jain teachings say that the earth is surrounded by three layers, which are characterized according to their density: dense as water, dense as wind, and dense as a fine wind. Beyond these lies empty space. Our modern science has come to the same conclusion: atmosphere; troposphere, containing nitrogen and oxygen; and stratosphere with the ozone layer. Beyond that is interplanetary space.

People nowadays have increasingly come to hold the view that other life-forms apart from us must exist in the universe. The Jains have always believed this; for them, the whole universe is filled with forms of life which are distributed unevenly across the heavens. It is interesting to note that though they recognize the existence of plants and basic life-forms on many different planets, it is only on a few specific planets that beings exist who are endowed with “voluntary movement.”27

The philosophers of the Jain religion describe the different characteristics which the inhabitants of various worlds possess. The heavens of the gods even have a name: Kalpas. There one can, apparently, find wonderful flying palaces—moving structures of which whole towns are often composed. These heavenly towns are arranged one above the other in such a way that from the center of each “level” the vimanas (divine chariots) can venture forth in all directions. When one epoch ends, and new tirthamkaras are due to be born, a bell sounds in the chief palace of “heaven.

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