Professor Gene Thursby of University of Florida wrote:

A revolution our understanding of the cosmology of the Puranas is in the making here. This book offers a way of reading ancient Indian texts that is profoundly interesting, that overturns a long history of scholarly undervaluation of the supposedly “only mythological” contents of Puranic literature.

This is an extraordinarily fine study that is a model of creative interpretation, clear exposition, and lucid argument. It proposes a new understanding of ancient texts from India that makes evident their contemporary relevance.

A daring yet wholly plausible new understanding of cosmological speculation from classical India is made possible by the author. He deserves to be highly commended for making a vital and immensely interesting contribution to the field of Indological scholarship.

Nothing less than the work of Hermes is being accomplished here. An entirely new dimension of appreciation for the Puranas is made possible for every reader of this book.

The Vedas long have enjoyed worldwide prestige as ancient teachings of lasting cultural significance. Now with this work the Puranas are shown to be texts that definitely deserve the honorable descriptive term ‘Vedic’ as well.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the works written by mathematicians that I have read, enjoyed, and long remembered. This book is one of them. It deserves and will repay reading by anyone with an interest in alternative ways to map, model, and convey the meaning of the universe.

A brilliant instance of “the hermeneutics of retrieval” that could have been written only by an accomplished mathematician. Discovers models of thought and models of cosmology in ancient Puranic texts that show them to be far more interesting and relevant to modern thought than has been appreciated.

Indology is rightly thought to be an arcane and tradition-bound area of scholarly study. This author opens the field to new insights that will enliven Indology and will equally reward the general reader.

This is one of the first truly post-colonial studies of the great texts of medieval India to appear. It is likely to mark the beginning of a new era in the appreciation of the genius of India’s past.

A significant contribution to cultural studies of science and scientific studies of ancient cultural documents. This is an excellent integrative study.

A pivotal work of the sort that Thomas S. Kuhn would have appreciated. It is the kind of study that can generate a profound paradigm shift in the thinking of the reader.

One of those rare works that is easy to follow and yet takes the reader into previously uncharted territory in modern interpretive scholarship. The CD-ROM does more than simply illustrate the models of thought and the comparative material marshalled by the author. It adds another dimension to his argument and gives the reader or viewer an opportunity for interactive involvement in the process of understanding ancient cosmology.

Robert G. Bauval, coauthor of The Orion Mystery and The Message of the Sphinx wrote:

I met Richard Thompson in 1995 in Switzerland during a conference, while he was still working with coauthor Michael Cremo. They had already made a name for themselves in the “Alternative History” field, and their book Forbidden Archaeology was on its was to become a classic in its field. It was then that he told me that he was working on a new book involving ancient India and its astronomy. He impressed me as being an open-minded, keen and meticulous researcher, and I waited for this book with anticipation. I was not to be disappointed. Thompson’s new book, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, is a massive and daring research into the cosmology found in the Bhagavatam, one of the most important religious literature of India. Thompson takes us back in time when man regarded himself an integral part of the cosmos and shows us how, in a strange way, such a system as the Bhagavatam cosmology bears an uncanny harmony with modern astronomy. More important and interesting is the way Thompson shows how the Bhagavatam literature presents visual astronomy in geographical and mythological settings which, in this respect, is very reminiscent of the Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt and many mythico-religious cosmologies of other ancient cultures of the world. In an elegant and erudite manner Thompson uses modern astronomical knowledge and tools to extract from the ancient texts their proper meaning which, on the whole, were previously shrouded in obscure passages poorly understood by other researchers. Also very cleverly, Thompson’s book is accompanied by a CD-ROM which contains over 260 colour pictures and 23 animations. All in all, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe is a wonderful piece of work that I wholeheartedly recommend and which should grace the bookshelves of everyone interested in the origins of Humankind and the mysteries of the past.

Gripping, scholarly and groundbreaking. Mysteries of the Sacred Universe deserves to be widely read and discussed.

Professor Subhash Kak of Louisiana State University, author of The Astronomical Code of the Rgveda and co-author of the In Search of the Cradle of Civilization wrote:

Richard Thompson’s Mysteries of the Sacred Universe is a very original book, and it represents an important advance in the understanding of the cosmology described in the famed Bhagavata Purana of India. Thompson looks at this cosmology from several points of view and he presents a compelling case showing that this cosmology was intended to have multiple meanings that span the terrestrial, the astronomical, and the spiritual planes.

The misunderstanding of the vocabulary and the nature of Puranic cosmology by the 19th-century Western scholars was responsible, in large part, for an erroneous assessment of the nature of the Indian civilization. This led to the notion that ancient India did not have much hard sciences and that the focus of Indian civilization was religion and speculative philosophy. Since the views of the Western scholars were adopted, uncritically, by the post-independence governments of Nehru and his successors and taught as the only way of approaching India’s past in schools and colleges, they had an enormous impact. They were internalized by Westernized Indians and alienated them from their heritage of the vast Puranic literature.

This situation is beginning to change only now. Researches of the past two or three decades have demonstrated that the Indians possessed a very sound scientific tradition and they created the earliest mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and grammar. It is also becoming clear that the Puranas are not to be taken literally and once the code underlying their vocabulary is understood, they are revealed as books of the most subtle scientific and spiritual knowledge. To this process Richard Thompson has made an important contribution by his Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. The CD accompanying the book is also outstanding. The graphics are spellbinding. I recommend this book and CD very strongly to all who are interested in India, either for its culture or its religious traditions.

Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri), author Yoga and Ayurveda, Gods, Sages and Kings etc., wrote: Richard Thompson is one of the foremost Vedic scholars and spiritual scientists today. He uniquely combines a knowledge of authentic Vedic traditions with a deeper understanding of the occult worlds and forces that modern physics is just beginning to recognize. His present volume, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe typifies his profound approach. A contact with his work will revolutionize your view of the world and of human history.

Dr. Howard Resnick, Ph.D. wrote:

Mysteries of the Sacred Universe by Dr. Richard L. Thompson constitutes yet another outstanding achievement in the distinguished career of this very important scholar. At a time when a somewhat dogmatic orthodoxy tends to govern academia, Thompson displays here all the intellectual ability, academic rigor, and the personal courage and creativity necessary to produce his brilliant discovery of the modern scientific relevance of ancient, Sanskrit descriptions of the universe. The large and growing number of rational human beings who cannot accept that ancient peoples were simply less evolved versions of ourselves, will find here a treasure of hard data and masterful reasoning to the contrary.

Professor William W. Wall, Santa Fe Community College, Florida wrote:

Dr. Thompson has a talent that may well be unique in our times: the ability to take complex, esoteric ideas that require high level mathematics, specialized technical expertise, and a familiarity with scholarship that spans the history of civilized humanity, and presenting them to the lay reader in a narrative style that is as user-friendly as a novel, but packed with sound reasoning, solid scholarship, and impressive empirical research.

Jeanne E. Bishop, Planetarium Director, Westlake, Ohio wrote:

Mr. Thompson’s premise is that the system of the Bhagavatam includes some modern understandings of the science of astronomy, not just mythology. . . . If the reader can judge what is science and what is not science, putting aside the non-science aspects of the cosmology, it seems clear that there are indeed a number of references to known scientific aspects of the sky in the Bhagavatam.

Bob Ledwidge, Editor, Living Traditions wrote:

Below is our review of your brilliant book. It will include an image of the bookcover. . . .

In this modern world of science and technology we have become divorced from not only the spiritual aspects of our universe but from the world itself. So often it seems nature is perceived as something to be manipulated, used and even engineered. Traditional cosmologies are derided in this “age of reason” as being primitive and ignorant. We hear so often about how far man has come in his understanding and how little the ancients knew.

Mysteries of the Sacred Universe is a challenge to this view. It takes the cosmology of the Srimad Bhagavatam, a holy text of Hinduism and decodes its many levels of meaning. What is discovered is in a word—awesome. Thompson shows that there are at least four levels of meaning carefully encoded into the text. These levels start with the most physical, the environs of India and move through a geographical map of the earth, an astronomical outline of the universe and a powerful outline of the esoteric secrets of the worlds of the Gods. This last level includes details of our own personal potential development and its inter-relation to the spiritual and materials worlds. This inter-relationship proves the coherence of the system, where spirit and matter link together into a “Great Chain of Being”. These interpretations are not disparate postmodern renderings of a text, but can clearly be found through diligent study.

Thompson takes what is a truly groundbreaking work and makes it accessible to the reader. I will not say this is an easy journey, certainly the book, video and CD-ROM are well produced and outline the subject in a logical way. However it is a difficult domain and will take some time for those used to “new age” material or spiritual books which are light in content. This is “content” heavy and while it will take some effort is well worth the investment of time.

I commend Govardhan Hill for making available such an important work. It has been produced in three different forms. A superb book, a video and an interactive CD-ROM which includes some 260 full colour pictures, animations and a video presentation. For me the video was a good introduction but I really needed the book so I could slowly digest what was being presented, read and re-read sections and take my time.

For those sick of post modern theology, scientific paradigms and new age speculation, here is an outline of a traditional cosmology of great depth and beauty. I recommend this work most highly to you.

A Barnes and Noble customer wrote:

A great book for this area of literature. Simply stated, this book was not at all what I had expected. It far exceeded my expectations. I had expected another treatise on the mythology and belief systems of Puranic literature mixed with some way of tying it to today’s understanding of life and the cosmos. Instead it was a very scholarly work that delved into the knowledge of ancient India and how it was expressed in terms of mythology. The author’s interpretation of this mythology brings it into focus and ties it to what we have learned in the field of modern astronomy. Instead of viewing the Puranic literature as being composed by those who were less knowledgeable and limited in their understanding and superstitious in their ways, his interpretations shows that they had a very advanced understanding of the universe around them. A little complex and confusing at times, it required rereading of several sections before I really understood how they were tied together. Not a work that I would recommend to a newcomer to the Puranic literature but a highly recommended volume to anyone with an intermediate knowledge.