Vedic Cosmology and UFOs: Consciousness as the Foundation

Picture a studio in California, two chairs, and a question that sounds like science fiction but is being asked in earnest: what if the ancient Vedic texts of India were describing flying machines, and what if those machines were not only made of metal? In a 2021 conversation for the New Thinking Allowed series, host Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, sat down with Michael Cremo, co-author with Richard Thompson of Forbidden Archaeology, to walk through a cosmos in which consciousness, not matter, is the starting point, and in which craft of every kind move between worlds populated by gods, demons, saints, and beings who may be neither. This article unpacks the ideas Cremo laid out: the Vedic view that mind precedes matter, the three-tiered structure that sorts vehicles by their nature, the cycles of cosmic time that frame it all, and the points of overlap with modern UFO reports that make the conversation worth taking seriously on its own terms, whatever one concludes about its literal claims.

What makes the Vedic view of reality different from a materialist one?

The starting assumption is the hinge of everything else. Cremo described the difference plainly: Western thought, in his telling, treats matter as primary and asks how consciousness somehow emerges from it, a question he said has not been explained yet. The Vedic cosmos reverses the arrow. As he put it in the interview, "the Vedic cosmos is based on consciousness, that matter comes from consciousness rather than the other way around."

That reversal produces what Cremo called a personalist universe, one in which personality, intelligence, and individuality are built into the structure of reality rather than appearing late in the story. If intelligence is foundational, then a cosmos full of intelligent beings is not an accident. It is the expected result. Cremo's point was that such a universe is inhabited, and that its inhabitants are in communication with one another through many channels, flying machines among them.

He was careful to distinguish this from simple polytheism. Beneath the many beings sits one ultimate being of pure consciousness, the source of the rest. Below that are superhuman beings called devas, which Cremo compared loosely to the angels of Judeo-Christian thought: intermediaries between the supreme and ordinary humans. Mishlove noted the resonance with the war between good and evil forces found in Zoroastrian and Christian traditions, and Cremo agreed that a similar cosmic conflict runs through the Vedic material.

How do Vedic texts describe flying craft across different realms?

This is the part of the conversation that sets it apart from most discussions of ancient aircraft. Cremo laid out a basic cosmological division that sorts vehicles by the level of reality they belong to. There is a terrestrial level of ordinary physical elements. There is a more subtle, intermediate realm of mental and intellectual energies. And there is the realm of pure consciousness, or spirit. Each level, he said, has its own kind of craft.

The sorting matters because it changes what a "vehicle" can mean. Some craft are material, built from physical elements and technology. Others are more subtle, produced through yogic and mystical powers. And some, in his words, are "of a definitely different nature and totally non-material." That third category is where the interview moves furthest from anything a mechanical reading could accommodate.

Cremo took the time to show that this is not a loose metaphor applied after the fact. He pointed to the way the texts describe craft in mechanical terms in some passages and in purely mental or spiritual terms in others, and argued that a reader should not force every description into a single category. A flying vehicle that operates through the mind is still, in the text's own logic, a vehicle, and it belongs to a different level of the cosmos than a machine of metal and fuel.

The Vedic cosmos is based on consciousness, that matter comes from consciousness rather than the other way around.

Michael Cremo, speaking with Jeffrey Mishlove on New Thinking Allowed, recorded September 8, 2021

Mishlove framed this in terms a modern listener recognizes. Flying vehicles, he noted, are used widely not only by the devas but by the asuras and many other levels of beings that inhabit the Vedic universe. The question for a reader is less whether the craft existed as hardware than what the texts think a craft is, and how its nature changes depending on whose mind is doing the flying.

Why do the Vedic texts describe a cosmos at war with itself?

The social structure of the Vedic universe is organized around two broad orientations, and understanding them clarifies why the craft exist at all. Cremo described the material cosmos as serving two purposes. The first is to let conscious beings enjoy themselves separately from God and pursue their own interests, often in intense competition with others doing the same thing. The second is to offer a path back. Souls can use the material world to reach a position beyond birth, death, conflict, and competition, which Cremo described as their natural state.

Those who strive toward that return are called suras, meaning saintly people. Those moving in the opposite direction are called asuras, meaning not saintly. The two groups come into conflict, and according to Cremo that conflict has gone on for ages, sometimes involving the earth itself. In that sense the Vedic universe is less a backdrop than a battlefield, and the vehicles are the means by which the combatants move across it.

This is a useful place for a reader to slow down. The asuras and suras are not defined by hardware. They are defined by orientation, by whether a conscious being is moving toward or away from its own deeper nature. A craft, then, is a tool in a moral and spiritual drama, and its description in the texts carries that weight with it.

Where do the Vedic accounts overlap with modern UFO reports?

Mishlove framed the discussion around what he called fringe phenomena: the ancient archaeological puzzles, the reports from UFO research, and the anomalies studied in parapsychology, all of which he suggested seem to accord with the Vedic tradition. Cremo agreed that the overlap is real and worth tracing, though he was clear that it has to be approached one step at a time.

The most interesting move Cremo made was to bring the conversation toward contemporary physics. He pointed out that modern cosmology and astrophysics have been moving in a direction that resembles the Vedic picture, particularly in the idea of a multiverse or many universes. The concept that the Vedic texts describe a plurality of universes, rather than one, is not new to them. For Cremo, the fact that present-day theorists now entertain versions of that idea is an invitation to take the older cosmology more seriously rather than dismiss it as myth.

Cremo also argued that the sheer scale of the Vedic universe was recognized long before Western traditions acknowledged how vast the cosmos is. That claim is central to his case that the texts are doing something more than storytelling. A tradition that counts time in vast cycles of creation and destruction is working on a different scale of imagination than one that begins with a single creation event a few thousand years ago.

It is worth being plain about the status of these claims. The comparison between Vedic craft and modern UFO reports is an interpretive argument, drawn from the texts and from Cremo's reading of them. The interview itself is a conversation about worldview and the texts' internal logic. It is not a verdict from mainstream science, and readers who want to weigh the physical evidence will need to look beyond it.

Are these descriptions literal, figurative, or something in between?

The question underneath the entire conversation is whether the Vedic universe should be read as a map or a myth. Cremo acknowledged that many people assume the mythology is meant figuratively, the product of poetic imagination and primitive thinking. He said that view is a real challenge to modern mentalities, and he treated it as the central obstacle to be overcome rather than a foregone conclusion.

The scale of his cosmic timeline makes the point vivid. In one account from the conversation, the god Maha Vishnu lies dreaming upon the cosmic ocean, and as he breathes out, millions of universes expand from the pores of his skin. When he breathes in, they return to his body. Cremo said each of those breaths lasts 311 trillion years, and that when universes are manifest, souls are placed within the material world rather than the spiritual one. For a reader raised on a single linear history, this is an enormous conceptual leap, and Cremo's aim seemed to be to show that it is internally coherent.

There is a further layer. The Vedic material describes beings with a wide range of technological and spiritual attainments, and some of the capacities attributed to advanced practitioners involve the mind shaping the physical world. Cremo discussed these descriptions as part of the same continuum that includes the craft, the realms, and the souls moving between bodies. The texts, in his reading, do not separate the technological from the spiritual the way modern categories do.

There are different kinds of vimanas described in the ancient Vedic text.

Michael Cremo, New Thinking Allowed, September 8, 2021 (paraphrased from the opening of the interview)

How should a reader approach this material?

The most productive approach is to treat the conversation as a guided tour of a worldview rather than a settled set of facts. Start with the foundational claim, that consciousness is primary, because nearly every other idea follows from it. Then follow the three-level structure of the cosmos, noting how it distinguishes material, subtle, and spiritual craft. Hold the suras and asuras in mind as the moral orientation that gives the whole system its drama. And finally, test the comparison to modern cosmology and to UFO reports against the sources, asking which parallels hold up and which depend on interpretation.

Readers who want to go deeper should expect that the primary texts are rich, layered, and often read differently across traditions. Cremo's own published work, including his book on human devolution and his collected scientific papers, extends his arguments beyond this conversation. Engaging with them alongside the texts themselves, and with critical responses, is the best way to form a considered view rather than an enthusiastic or dismissive one.

Where to go from here

This interview is most valuable as an entry point. It introduces a cosmology that inverts the materialist assumption, sorts flying craft by the level of reality they inhabit, and frames cosmic history on a timescale that dwarfs ordinary imagination. Whether you find the claims persuasive or not, the questions it raises about mind, matter, and the nature of vehicles and beings are unusually precise. Watch the full conversation on the New Thinking Allowed channel, read Cremo's books for the argument in full, and compare the Vedic accounts with the reports and theories that interest you most. The conversation is an invitation to slow down and take a worldview seriously on its own terms, and that is the most useful thing a reader can take from it.