438
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[Canto 3, Ch. 11]
world are the subject matter of  sāṅkhya  philosophy. The first sixteen diversities are the eleven senses and five sense objects, and the eight elements are the gross and subtle matter, namely earth, water, fire, air, sky, mind, intelligence and ego. All these combined together are distributed throughout the entire universe, which extends diametrically to four billion miles. Besides this universe of our experience, there are innumerable other universes. Some of them are bigger than the present one, and all of them are clustered together under similar material elements as described below.
TEXT 41
दशोत्तराधिकैर्यत्र प्रविष्टः परमाणुवत् । लक्ष्यतेऽन्तर्गताश्वान्ये कोटिशो ह्यण्डराशयः ॥४१॥
daśottarādhikair yatra praviṣṭaḥ paramāṇuvat lakṣyate'ntar-gatāś cānye koṭiśo hy aṇḍa-rāśayaḥ
daśa-uttara-adhikaiḥ—with ten times greater thickness; yatra—in which; praviṣṭaḥ—entered; parama-aṇuvat—like atoms; lakṣyate—it (mass of universes) appears; antaḥ-gatāḥ—come together; ca—and; anye—in the other; koṭiśaḥ—clustered; hi—for; aṇḍa-rāśayaḥ—huge combination of universes.
TRANSLATION
The layers of elements covering the universes are each ten times thicker than the one before, and all the universes clustered together appear like atoms in a huge combination.
PURPORT
The coverings of the universes are also constituted of the elements earth, water, fire, air and ether, and each is ten times thicker than the one before. The first covering of the universe is earth, and it is ten times thicker than the universe itself. If the universe is four billion miles in size, then the size of the earthly covering of the universe is four billion times ten. The covering of water is ten times greater than the earthly covering, the covering of fire is ten times greater than the watery covering, the covering of air is ten times greater than that of the fire, the covering of ether is ten times greater still than that of air, and so on. The universe within the coverings of matter appears to be like an atom in comparison to the coverings, and the number of universes is unknown even to those who can estimate the coverings of the universes.