Science01
Other dimensions or universes are speculative. The established map is the observable cosmos.
Asked of every system
Twenty-two questions
The same questions, asked in the same order. Read down a question to see where they rhyme and where they do not. No establishment is rewritten to fit the others.
- 01Where are we?
- 02What is reality made of?
- 03What is a human being?
- 04What is consciousness?
- 05Where did humanity come from?
- 06What happens at death?
- 07Does consciousness return to embodiment?
- 08Where is consciousness between lives?
- 09Are there nonhuman intelligent beings?
- 10Can those beings become human or appear human?
- 11Are there multiple realms or worlds?
- 12Is there a central mountain, tree, pillar, axis, heart, or sacred center?
- 13Is the world itself alive?
- 14Has civilization or the world been destroyed or reset before?
- 15Does history operate linearly or cyclically?
- 16Is there an opposing positive/negative force?
- 17What is humanity supposed to become?
- 18Is reincarnation a destination, punishment, school, growth process, or something else?
- 19What lies beyond the visible world?
- 20How does this tradition claim humans can know any of this?
- 21Does the structure or motion of the heavens correspond to events, conditions, or consciousness within the human realm?
- 22Why did humanity forget?
11 / 22
Are there multiple realms or worlds?
- Judaism02
Heavens, Sheol, and later concepts.
Heavenly realms in a layered supernatural cosmos.
Heaven, Earth, hell; concepts vary by tradition.
- Islam05
Multiple heavens and unseen realms.
Many lokas/realms.
Multiple realms.
Multiple spiritual and celestial domains.
Duat and celestial realms.
Divine realm and underworld.
Multiple worlds.
Spiritual dimensions intertwined with the lived world — not necessarily a stacked elsewhere.
Layered heavens and underworlds.
Spiritual and material creation.
Multiple degrees/worlds in a vast inhabited creation.
Cosmic history beyond Earth. The material universe is not ultimate identity.
Celestial and terrestrial domains correspond. Additional realms depend upon the underlying tradition.
Heaven, earth, and the netherworld are distinguished in Inanna’s Descent.
Yes: sky or Olympus, earth, underworld. Later philosophy adds a realm of forms or intellect that myth does not require.
- Jainism20
Yes. Heavens, the middle world, and hells are parts of one loka, not separate creations.
- Sikhism21
The created world and God who pervades it. Multiple stacked heavens are not the framework of the teaching.
- Shinto22
Myth has the heavenly plain and Yomi as well as the land. Ordinary practice is not a tour of those realms.
Heaven, the human world, and places of the dead are widely distinguished. How many courts or heavens depends on the stream and on Buddhist borrowing.
Yes in the systematic texts: fullness above, cosmos below, often with several heavens ruled by archons.
Yes. Spheres of the planets and a divine region beyond them, in the classical ascent texts.
Yes. Ayé and òrun.
The Dreaming is not recorded here as a second continent above this one. Country and ancestral law are the structure people actually teach.
Yes in the widespread three-layer scheme: upper, this, and inner or lower. Valleys differ.
This world, and worlds of God after death. A many-tiered cosmos like Meru or Yggdrasil is not the picture.
A sky world and this world on the turtle. Not a Meru, and not the Diné worlds below.
Unclassified / Source Needed. The Lakota spirit road is a path, not a stack of worlds.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Earlier worlds below this surface. Not the Haudenosaunee sky world.
Earlier worlds, and this one. Not a Meru.
síd is named as an otherworld. Unclassified / Source Needed beyond that name.
Annwn is named as an otherworld. Unclassified / Source Needed beyond that name.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Unclassified / Source Needed.
Working synthesis · not a verdict
Multiple realms.