Multiverse (religion)


The concept of a multiverse is explored in various religious cosmologies that propose that the totality of existence comprises multiple or infinitely many universes, including our own. Usually, such beliefs include a creation myth, a history, a worldview and a prediction of the eventual fate or destiny of the world. The worldview discusses the current organizational form of our universe and may contain references to other supernatural world or worlds. These references have aided several esoteric practices, including contacts with spirit worlds, and activities concerning personal or inner spiritual development.
Many of these worlds include an afterlife existence, which may be very different from existence in the physical plane or the world of the living; common afterlife realms include heaven, hell, and realm of the dead. Eschatological scenarios may include a new, different world after the end time of the current world. For example, Hindu cosmology includes the idea of an infinite cycle of births and deaths and an infinite number of universes with each cycle lasting 8.64 billion years.
The cosmological ideas in various religious traditions have clearly evolved in time due to the introduction of new concepts and the exchange of ideas with other cultures. Nevertheless, perennial philosophers believe that these traditions all share a single supernatural truth or origin.

Ancient Egypt

In Egyptian mythology, Duat is the realm of the dead, an underworld placed beneath the earth and associated with both positive concepts such as fertility and rebirth — personified by the god Osiris — but also negative concepts such as chaos — personified by the snake Apophis. Apophis threatened Maat, the cosmic order that was central to Egyptian religious thought, and that regulated all natural cycles, including death and rebirth.
Pyramid texts had the main purpose of guiding the spirit of the king out of the tomb, and into new life. They consist of provision, transition and protective spells to help the deceased to become an Akh. When this rite of passage was completed the Egyptians believed they lived on in "the fields of Reeds", a paradisiac likeness of the real world.
Egyptian culture has had a strong religious influence on other ancient cultures and on the classical world.

Animistic traditions

The term animism refers to the philosophical, religious and spiritual concept that not only humans and animals, but also plants, rocks and other natural objects and phenomena such as mountains, rivers and the thunder have a distinct spiritual essence. Contact with non-corporeal entities from this spirit world is also possible in animism. The concept of animism can be found in polytheistic and monotheistic religions, and also in the belief systems of indigenous people, such as shamanism. The oldest found evidence for the general idea of spiritual essence dates back to the Middle Palaeolithic Period.

Buddhism

The concept of infinite worlds is mentioned in the Apannaka Jataka:
Disciples," the Buddha said "nowhere between the lowest of hells below and the highest heaven above, nowhere in all the infinite worlds that stretch right and left, is there the equal, much less the superior, of a Buddha. Incalculable is the excellence which springs from obeying the Precepts and from other virtuous conduct. - Apannaka Jataka

Hinduism

The concept of a multiverse is well known and mentioned many times in ancient Hindu Puranic and Vedanta literature, such as in the Bhagavata Purana, Brahma Vaivarta Purana and Yoga vasistha:
Analogies to describe multiple universes also exist in the Puranic literature:

Islam

There are seven verses in the Quran describing seven heavens. One verse says that each heaven or sky has its own order, possibly meaning laws of nature. After mentioning the seven heavens, another verse says, "and similar earths". Examples include verse "He who created the seven tournaments one imposed over the other..." The Quranic verse 65:12 also states, "It is Allah who has created seven heavens and of the earth, the like of them."
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, in dealing with his conception of physics and the physical world in his Matalib, "explores the notion of the existence of a multiverse in the context of his commentary" on the Qur'anic verse, "All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds." He raises the question of whether the term "worlds" in this verse refers to "multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond this known universe." In volume 4 of the Matalib, Al-Razi states:
Al-Razi rejected the Aristotelian and Avicennian view of the impossibility of multiple universes. He pointed out what he saw as weaknesses of the main Aristotelian arguments against the existence of multiple universes. His rejection arose from his affirmation of the atomism advocated by the Ash'ari school of Islamic theology. This version of atomism has specific views about the vacant space, or void, in which the atoms move, combine and separate. He spoke of the "void" in greater detail in volume 5 of the Matalib. He argued that God can fill the vacuum with an infinite number of universes.
Ibn Arabi held that, since God is endless, consequently there can be no end of created universes.

Kabbalah

The concept of parallel worlds is also mentioned in Kabbalah:
"There are five worlds between the Creator and our world. Each of them consists of five Partzufim and each Partzuf of five Sefirot. In total there are 125 levels between us and the Creator. Malchut, moving through all these levels, reaches the last one, and in this way, Behina Dalet, the only creation, merges with the four previous phases."

Mormonism

Because Mormonism teaches that Jesus created the universe, yet his father, God the Father, once dwelt upon an earth as a mortal, it may be interpreted that Mormonism teaches the existence of a multiverse, and it is not clear if the other inhabited worlds mentioned in LDS scripture and teachings refers to planets within this universe or not.
The idea of multiple universes has been entertained by Mormon leaders since its beginnings. Brigham Young taught there is no such thing as "empty space", lending to the idea that any space beyond this universe is occupied. Apostle Orson Pratt said, "We can come to no other conclusion, but that worlds, and systems of worlds, and universes of worlds existed in the boundless heights and depths of immensity…". Pratt also taught, "Can we get away from it? No; for it fills all the intermediate spaces between world and world, between one system and another, and between universe and universe... and there is no space in which there is no kingdom, and there is no kingdom in which there is no space" .

New Age

The philosopher and forerunner of the New Age movement P. D. Ouspensky stated in 1934:
"Our mind follows the development of possibilities always in one direction only. But, in fact, every moment contains a very large number of possibilities. And all of them are actualised, only we do not see it and do not know it. We always see only one of the actualisations, and in this lie the poverty and limitation of the human mind. But if we try to imagine the actualisation of all the possibilities of the present moment, then of the next moment, and so on, we shall feel the world growing infinitely, incessantly multiplying by itself and becoming immeasurably rich and utterly unlike the flat and limited world we have pictured to ourselves up to this moment."

Spiritualistic research

One spiritualistic model of the multiverse
The celestial planes
The mental-causal planes
The higher astral planes
The middle astral planes
The lower astral planes
The physical plane

Many attempts at research, labelled by proponents as scientific, into contact with spirit worlds have yielded various results, including alleged information about the multiverse. Much of the research primarily focused on discovering the connection between life and the afterlife and the nature of this connection.
The majority of these contacts are labelled as Instrumental Trans-Communication by the physicist Ernst Senkowski. Researcher Mark Macy understands these contacts to be a telepathically assisted form of communication, that is still affected by the beliefs, thoughts and attitudes of the researchers, but to a lesser degree than during channelling. Much rarer Trans-Dimensional Communications, on the other hand, are understood by Alan Bennet of the Scole Experimental Group as a form of transcommunication which uses an artificial receptor as a point of entry for spiritual waves. This receptor is directly connected to earthside instruments.
In the listed investigations as well as others, spiritualistic researchers concluded to have received detailed reports from the spiritual dimensions describing a vast, inhabited world in the astral planes. The spirit realms are described as dimensions or planes distinguishable by the differing densities and vibratory rates of the substance they contain, and the various dimensions are said to interpenetrate, just as do the spiritual bodies inside us.
Such research – and hence its outcome – is controversial, and the principles underlying it as well as its methods are regarded as pseudoscience in the scientific community. In esotericism, however, the belief in the legitimacy of such research – labelled “rejected knowledge” by professor Wouter Hanegraaff – is studied as an integral part of western history, culture and society. According to Hanegraaff, the proper attitude of scholars towards this subject is “methodological agnosticism“ since the supernatural – per definition – lies outside the scope of normal academic research.