In the Beginning: Was There a Beginning

?Every culture has a creation myth. What was there in the beginning? Was anything there? Was it a void as Buddha visualized? Was it an eternal continuum as the Veda postulated? Was it an old man who created a woman from a man’s rib and rested after 6 days? Was it a bunch of spirits, gods, or goddesses? Was it a big bang? Who knows? Does it really matter?

Myth of Creation

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made

Genesis, circa 1400 BCE

Whence all creation had its origin, the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not, the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven, he knows — or maybe even he does not know.

Rig Veda, circa 3000 BCE

Why is the Creator always ‘he’ in all religions? Is it because ‘he’ is fallible?

Coacharya

?In the beginning…this is how most fairy tales start. So do tales of creation in religion. Was there a beginning? Really?

The Big Bang is but a whimper till it answers what led to the Big Bang, or the Singularity that preceded Big Bang. If you believe that a bearded old man with a harp in the Genesis?snoozed after a week, probably never to wake up, tired after creating the man, and then the woman from his ribs, and the snake to set their world to action descending gradually into chaos, you can believe any fairy tale.

?In the Vedic philosophy, there is no beginning. The universe always existed, exists and will continue to exist. The Creator was mocked in the Veda. The nasadiya sukta in the 10th mandala of the Rig Veda asks,

Who really knows, and who can swear,

How creation came, when or where!

Even gods came after creation’s day,

Who really knows, who can truly say

When and how did creation start?

Did the Creator do it? Or did the Creator not?

Only the Creator, up there, knows, maybe;

Or perhaps, not even the Creator.

Quantum Science is probably coming to this conclusion. Creation is a corollary to regeneration. Everything that is matter has a time and place. After its time, matter stops occupying space. Matter reverts to energy.

In the Vedic process, creation has a sound. The sound is silent in the space of energy. It is called the unstruck sound or anahata. It’s believed to be the un-intoned, silent sound of aum in four syllables. This primal sound is a point of singularity, not as a unique creative event, but a starting point in journeys of billion or more light year spaces.?

In Vedic philosophy, there is no creator. There is no creation. Tales of a creator came after several millennia, from a desperate quest by humans for validation of their own existence. Unlike creatures before them, humans had nothing better to do with their idle minds. As the Malayalam poet Vayalar says poignantly, 'Man created religion/ Religion created God/ Man, Religion and God destroyed the earth and the hearts'

Together, humans, religions and the imagery of gods disintegrated humanity, and destroyed the goodness of the human heart and mind.

The Vedic philosophy eschewed religion and gods. Isa Vasya Upanishad says ‘everything is energy’, a truth that took 5000 years more for science to accept. Everything is energy in essence and matter in form. As in the universe, this energy is ever expanding, with and without form. It has no judgement, yet has an intent, an intent to be, unspoken and unheard.?

?This, in turn, leads to the existential question: is there an intent or purpose to human life? Animals and other creatures are wiser. They don’t question existence. They live existentially. They don’t seek a purpose. Living as nature intended is their purpose. Humans have complicated their lives with their minds, the frontal cortices. What is the purpose of all our scientific and technological advances led by the human mind, if they end in destroying the planet as it seems more and more likely? If there isn’t a purpose, as Socrates asked, why care about what happens? Point is that we do. We want to be happy, whatever it may mean. We do not wish to suffer, bodily, emotionally or cognitively. In one way or another, in any language and culture, happiness is what we strive for. Does an active mind enable happiness? Enough psychological studies disprove this.

Rounding off for errors, science tells us that the universe is 14 billion years old, and the earth is 4.5?billion years old. Within this frame, our ancestors may have been around for about six million years, the modern form of humans evolving?about 200,000 years ago, civilisations as we define them developing about 6,000 years ago, and industrialisation as well as extended communication starting only 300 years ago. Vedic mythology comes close to these estimates with about 4.5 billion years for earth arising from Brahma, the Creator. Biblical estimates of 6000 years are unreal since recorded civilisations flourished by then. Yet, people believe and live that faith, hoping that will make them happy, perhaps in another time and space.?

Why this Myth?

However old or young, the human mind has been busy in its several hundred thousand years of existence inquiring into the origin of life, purpose of life and what happens after life. The more accelerated the advance of science and technology in the last hundred years, the more desperate the need to believe that something or someone created us.

In the earlier newsletter, I spoke of three disempowerment issues, loss, expectations, and anxiety. Loss is about fear, expectation about desire and anxiety about the stress caused by fear and desire. The greatest fear is the fear of loss of life. It matters little whether your religion believes that you live only once, or you will be born again. No one wants to leave the world they live in. Fear of death, of non-survival, drives all of us.

At the next level, we need safety and security while we live. Need for security is a fundamental feature of human needs as is survival. We need a parent figure to feel safe. Our ancestors create gods to feel safe. Gods themselves are immortal in all cultures. In turn, Gods, and those who created gods, controlled us in the name of god. Over time, religion of gods created the religion of humans as Monarchs, all of whom claimed divine origin. This requires control. Illogical as everyone knew it was, these myths of gods of religion, and gods of governance, helped us feel safe. Religions, governments, and armies were created for protection, security and safety. ?They ended controlling us as rulers. In the end it is dystopian.

Reflect

Religions teach love and compassion, but their leaders preach hate and discord.

Religions teach empathy, but their leaders manipulate empathy and brainwash followers into conflict.

Paraphrasing Swami Vivekananda, ‘It’s good to be born as a Hindu, Muslim, Christian in the best way you can. It’s not good to die with wisdom of only that religion’. Have you evolved beyond the limiting beliefs of your religion?

In the next newsletter, let’s explore evolution of the species and the human. Has it really been an evolution? ?

Ram is co-founder and mentor at Coacharya?https://coacharya.com. Ram's focus is integration of Eastern wisdom with modern science, spiritually, systemically and sustainably.