In terms of the history of the world, the Kardashev Scale is a relatively new idea.
Created (as it was) in the 1960s, in the decades since then it’s gone on to
shape so much about how we view space, human civilization, and the search for alien life.
But what about in the years, decades, centuries, and millennia before the 1960s?
The bizarre thing is that, in some cases, it appears as though ancient civilizations may have
predicted the whole thing. Or perhaps they just knew about it long before even Kardashev himself.
This is Unveiled, and today we’re exploring the Kardashev Scale in Hindu cosmology.
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Our regular viewers are by now well aware of the Kardashev Scale, so we’ll keep this brief! The
Kardashev Scale was devised by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, as a way to measure any
and all civilizations. Real world groups, but also hypothetical groups that might exist in space.
The scale ranks based on energy potential, with Type One capable of harvesting all the energy from
its home planet; Type Two capable of harvesting all the energy from its home star system;
and with Type Three, it’s the home galaxy. Higher levels have also been added to the original scale,
for theorized civilizations with the energy potential of the universe, the multiverse,
and so on. Naturally, the further up the scale any civilization dares to go, the more advanced their
society, technology, knowledge (pretty much everything about them) gets. It’s generally
said that we, humans, rank around 0.7 on the scale… so we’ve got a long way still to go
before completing it. But, what’s curious, is that our ancestors of the distant past may have known
all this long before we were even born. If we travel back in time just a few
hundred years, we have various records to draw upon regarding the (often successful)
future predictions made by those alive then. The renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci gave us some
of perhaps the most famous apparent foretellings, what with his detailed diagrams of helicopters and
other machines that were far ahead of their time. If we travel thousands of years back,
the trail gets increasingly difficult to follow… but there are still stories, superstitions and
legends passed down that seemingly show past groups contemplating concepts like (or very close
to) the Kardashev Scale far, far earlier than when the modern world finally worked it out.
According to some interpretations of ancient Hindu scripture, there’s mention of flying machines,
of the importance of stars, the potential for immortality, and even of time travel.
The Vimana frequently appear in epic Sanskrit poems, as flying chariots, or sometimes as
flying temples. They’ve before been described as early predictions of today’s jumbo jets…
but, while some of our planes perhaps can rival a temple in terms of size,
arguably the Vimana hint at something even more advanced. Generation ships could well
feature in a Kardashev Type Two civilization or higher, so could the Vimana actually be an
early version of that? By all accounts, these legendary machines link Earth to the heavens…
and that’s perhaps not so far away from what humankind is trying to achieve with space travel.
A Dyson Sphere is a key structure in Kardashev models, too. A massive frame built around a star,
siphoning all the energy from that star, so that it can be redistributed as efficiently
as possible around a civilization. We’ve yet to find one in the modern day, of course, but might
there have been hints toward one again in earlier texts? Certainly, stars were seen as incredibly
important, and the legendary Hindu figures known as the Ribhus are sometimes depicted as being
stars. There are three of them altogether, and they’re often described as artisans.
They were gifted creators, impressing the Gods with their miraculous inventions and abilities…
including, again, the creation of flying machines. But the Ribhus were also famed for restoring youth
to their parents. In today’s world we’re still dreaming of a way to stop the clock on aging…
and any civilization that managed to do so would instantly rocket up the Kardashev Scale.
But these are hardly new ideas, with the quest for immortality being handled by star-fuelled
master-creators in ancient legend, too. In Soma, the myths of the past perhaps include
a substance of the future, as well. Soma appears in some of the earliest Hindu texts available,
as a mystical potion made of an unknown ingredient… but it gifts whoever drinks it
with divine power and knowledge. The exact effects of Soma differ between retellings,
but it’s generally thought of as an elixir of life. Soma grants the drinker with immortality,
increased strength, pure thoughts… all the things that a perfect being might require.
Not every interpretation of the Kardashev Scale includes living forever as a feature for higher
beings… but many do. Sometimes, the Kardashev way of doing things includes a more digital,
clinical mind upload so that our consciousness survives on a server of some kind. But climbing
the Kardashev Scale also means mastering the natural world. Soma is usually thought of
as a plant first and foremost, and the debate continues as to what that plant could be. But,
seen against the backdrop of a Kardashev future, perhaps we’ll only reach a higher level once we’ve
discovered something as vital as Soma. In the Aldous Huxley dystopia novel, “Brave New World”,
Soma is the name given to a drug that ultimately causes some pretty major problems…
but were a civilization to better plot their way through the Kardashev Scale, then something akin
to Soma could be the key to their success. Finally, if flying machines, star power
and immortality don’t quite hook you in, the ancient texts seemingly cover time travel, too.
It might feel as though time travel should be the brainchild of contemporary society - particularly
as the writer HG Wells is generally credited with bringing it to the mainstream, around about the
turn of the twentieth century - but actually these are ideas that’ve been around for much longer.
Broadly, some crucial themes in Hindu legend have to do with time,
as the differentiation between the material and spiritual realms plays a vital part.
Time moves differently for the Gods than it does for mere mortals on Earth, too, with the highest
powers experiencing whole cycles of hundreds of thousands of years… all while we eek out just a
few decades in our lives, on the ground. The best-known example of time travel in
Hindu scripture, though, is the legend of King Kakudmi and his daughter Revati.
It’s said that Kakudumi sought help from the Creator God, Brahma, in finding a husband for
his daughter, who he deemed too beautiful and talented for anyone on Earth. So, the father
and daughter went to Brahma, on a higher level of existence, and spent some time with him. However,
as they had ascended to a higher plane to do so, it was soon revealed to them that everything back
on Earth had aged by thousands of years in their seemingly brief absence. They had spent what
felt like only a few moments with Brahma, but back home the world had changed beyond all recognition.
Strictly speaking, this appears to be more an example of time dilation - an Einsteinian
concept - but still, it arguably shows that the flow of time was well understood even thousands
of years ago. Again, while access to time travel isn’t an essential component on the Kardashev
Scale, it’s widely thought that advanced enough civilizations will have mastered it.
And so, it’s perhaps little wonder that when we get to the highest levels - Types Three, Four,
Five, and more - the theorized members of these Kardashev groups are so often compared to gods.
Because their powers would be almost divine in nature.
However, there’s one last kicker to the legend of Kakudmi and Revati, revealed upon their return to
Earth which, remember, is now thousands of years older than when they left it. In the
intervening time, human civilization is said to have regressed. Gotten worse, not better. So that
people are less capable and less knowledgeable than they once were. If something like the
Kardashev Scale does exist in ancient stories, then, perhaps the message is that it’ll never be
completed either by us or on this planet. In Hinduism, there are cycles to life, the
universe and everything, which does offer hope in even the worst of times… but the Kardashev Scale
isn’t quite so flexible. On the Scale, we go ever onward, seeking to beat our last achievements,
improve on previous lifetimes, and stride into the future with more and more power.
We get to Type One, we aim for Type Two… and then it’s Type Three, and so on. But whenever
the technologies required seemingly appear in ancient legend, the message isn’t always so clear.
The Vimana are flying machines but they’re also genuine temples. The Ribhus arguably hint toward
harvesting energy from stars, but immortality is still seen as more a divine gift than a feasible
breakthrough. The exact composition of Soma is still unknown… and time travel happens, but it
takes a visit to the Gods to make it happen. Still, it’s perhaps a little spooky how often
millennia-old stories mimic the kinds of technology that we’re hoping to see
sometime in the future. And that’s the Kardashev Scale in Hindu cosmology.
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