Chap­ter XI intro­duces a puz­zling obser­va­tion from the nar­ra­tor, who is amazed by the tem­per­ate cli­mate in a world far below Earth­’s sur­face. Rather than expe­ri­enc­ing the expect­ed scorch­ing heat pre­dict­ed by main­stream geol­o­gy, the sub­ter­ranean envi­ron­ment feels much like the mild regions of south­ern Europe. This rais­es ques­tions about the accu­ra­cy of sur­face-world sci­ence, which claims that heat ris­es con­sis­tent­ly with depth. Even in val­leys sit­u­at­ed deep beneath the earth, the air remains breath­able and the tem­per­a­ture pleas­ant. The nar­ra­tor is both baf­fled and intrigued by this con­tra­dic­tion. As he con­tin­ues to explore, his dis­be­lief grows, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing how con­sis­tent and com­fort­able the cli­mate remains regard­less of ele­va­tion.

The Vril-ya offer par­tial expla­na­tions for this phe­nom­e­non, point­ing to the porous nature of the earth and the pres­ence of vast inter­nal cav­i­ties. These geo­log­i­cal struc­tures allow the cir­cu­la­tion of air and the dis­si­pa­tion of heat, func­tion­ing like a nat­ur­al cool­ing sys­tem. While this insight helps explain some of the tem­per­a­ture reg­u­la­tion, it still does­n’t account for all the anom­alies the nar­ra­tor observes. Accord­ing to Zee, deep­er regions do even­tu­al­ly become unbear­ably hot, but not to the extent imag­ined by sur­face dwellers. She adds that air cur­rents formed with­in these cav­erns cre­ate a sta­bi­liz­ing effect. Although her expla­na­tion is ground­ed in rea­son, it remains spec­u­la­tive and not uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed even with­in their soci­ety.

One par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing belief held by Vril-ya thinkers is that no part of cre­ation exists with­out pur­pose. This includes even the seem­ing­ly unin­hab­it­able extremes of the inner earth. They posit that intel­li­gent beings suit­ed to those envi­ron­ments must exist, though they may dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the Vril-ya or humans. Their phi­los­o­phy leans toward a the­ol­o­gy where every niche of nature is filled with life. This idea, while mys­ti­cal in tone, reflects their broad­er worldview—one where nature and life are inter­con­nect­ed through divine inten­tion. The nar­ra­tor finds this per­spec­tive both hum­bling and dis­ori­ent­ing, as it chal­lenges his long-held assump­tions about sci­ence and exis­tence.

He con­tin­ues to reflect on how the Vril-ya rec­on­cile their spir­i­tu­al beliefs with observ­able real­i­ty. Rather than reject­ing sci­en­tif­ic inquiry, they inte­grate it into their philo­soph­i­cal frame­work. Their con­cept of knowl­edge does not require total cer­tain­ty but allows for gaps filled with con­tem­pla­tion and faith. This intel­lec­tu­al open­ness has allowed their civ­i­liza­tion to progress with­out being hin­dered by rigid dog­ma. In this con­text, sci­ence and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty coex­ist rather than com­pete. It offers a sharp con­trast to the often polar­ized views found in human soci­ety, where the mate­r­i­al and meta­phys­i­cal are fre­quent­ly seen as oppo­sites.

The cli­mate and atmos­phere in this sub­ter­ranean world have also had last­ing effects on the phys­i­ol­o­gy and cul­ture of the Vril-ya. With­out harsh weath­er or dras­tic sea­son­al changes, their archi­tec­ture is more open, their cloth­ing lighter, and their ener­gy needs reduced. This sta­bil­i­ty con­tributes to their calm demeanor and low-stress lifestyle. Health con­di­tions asso­ci­at­ed with envi­ron­men­tal stress are vir­tu­al­ly nonex­is­tent. The men­tal and emo­tion­al well-being of the Vril-ya ben­e­fits as well, as a sta­ble envi­ron­ment cul­ti­vates sta­ble behav­ior. In this way, their mild cli­mate is not just a sci­en­tif­ic anom­aly but a cor­ner­stone of their utopi­an soci­ety.

The narrator’s expo­sure to these ideas leads him to reeval­u­ate his own sci­en­tif­ic edu­ca­tion. He real­izes that knowl­edge built on assump­tions can be mis­lead­ing when not test­ed against new real­i­ties. This sub­ter­ranean world has chal­lenged him to embrace a broad­er, more inte­grat­ed under­stand­ing of nature. As he reflects, he begins to appre­ci­ate that not all knowl­edge can be mea­sured or explained in tra­di­tion­al terms. Some truths reveal them­selves only through lived expe­ri­ence. And in this case, the truth lies in a warm, lumi­nous cav­ern deep beneath the earth, where sci­ence and won­der walk side by side.