Basic Creation Model

“When no goblin nebulae breathed and glided in the space body, when no fire-eyed baby planets opened their eyes in the cradle of space, when no star-rivers ran across the tracts of infinite space, when the ocean of space was unpeopled, uninhabited by floating island universes, when the sun and moon and planetary families did not swim in space, when a little ball of earth with its dollhouses and diminutive human beings did not exist, when no object of any kind had come into being - Spirit existed. This Unmanifested Absolute cannot be described except that It was the Knower, the Knowing, and the Known existing as One. In It the being, Its cosmic consciousness, and Its omnipotence, all were without differentiation: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever newly joyous Spirit.

In this Ever-New Bliss, there was no space or time, no dual conception or law of relativity; everything that was, is, or is to be existed as One Undifferentiated Spirit. Space and time and relativity are categories of objects; as soon as a human being sees a planet hanging in the sky, he conceives that it is occupying dimensional space and existing in time, relative to its place in the universe. But when there were no finite objects of creation, neither were there the dimensions of being that define them, only the Blissful Spirit.
 
When, whence, and why came creation into being? Who may make bold to read the Mind of the Infinite in seeking causes from the Uncaused, beginnings from the Ever-Existing, paltry reasons from Omniscience? Audacious mortals pursue their queries, while sages enter that Mind and return to state in unadorned simplicity that the One entertained a desireless desire to enjoy His Bliss through many, and the cosmos and its beings were born. The Unmanifested Spirit felt, "I am alone. I am conscious Bliss, but there is no one to taste the sweetness of My Nectar of Joy." Even as He thus dreamed, He became many.
 
Spirit, being the only existing Substance, had naught but Itself with which to create. Spirit and Its universal creation could not be essentially different, for two ever-existing Infinite Forces would consequently each be absolute, which is by definition an impossibility. An orderly creation requires the duality of Creator and created. Thus, Spirit first gave rise to a Magic Delusion, Maya, the cosmic Magical Measurer, which produces the illusion of dividing a portion of the Indivisible Infinite into separate finite objects, even as a calm ocean becomes distorted into individual waves on its surface by the action of a storm. All creation is nothing but Spirit, seemingly and temporarily diversified by Spirit’s creative vibratory activity.”
~ P. Yogananda

“Endless universes, tier upon tier, zone after zone, all revolving within him.” ~ P. Yogananda 

“Just as the … light going out of the movie booth is seen to be a transparent searchlight free from any inherent pictures, yet images mysteriously appear on the screen; so God from His booth … is emanating a spherical bundle of rays, invisible searchlights, which … produce … on the screen of space an endless variety of apparently real pictures. But the images are shadowy illusions; the only reality is God and His individualized consciousness in the forms that behold and interact in the play.” ~ P. Yogananda

The universe and our role in it have already been largely covered in the two proceeding sections, i.e. the Introduction and The Supreme Being.

The above quotations by Yogananda provide stunning images of creation to complement this material.

Before we move on to look at modern science's view of the universe, perhaps it is useful to briefly summarize the key points as espoused by the mystics;

• There is a Supreme Being that exists beyond creation. This supreme being, or Spirit, is the sole reality.

• Spirit is immortal, infinite bliss consciousness – beyond time and space, beyond normal human comprehension. It is one and indivisible.

• At its own whim, for entertainment purposes, Spirit chose to create an illusory, virtual  world in which It could play as separate, multiple forms of Itself. This is known as God’s lila, or play, in which He pretends to be many individualized forms and enters a universal playground that He has created from his consciousness.

• Included in these individualized forms are the "gods," direct extensions of Spirit's consciousness, each with a unique attribute of the Supreme Being. These gods, or souls, enter the virtual world of the universe by taking on human body-forms.

• The dream creation consists of countless virtual universes, each with galaxies, stars, planets, etc. After a time, the whole of creation dissolves and this “dream” of Spirit ends. In a cyclic manner, virtual universes come into being and then again disappear. During periods of no creation, Spirit exists in an unmanifested state - as pure bliss consciousness, without form, beyond time and space. As experienced by humans within creation, this cycle of creation and dissolution takes place over a period of billions and billions of years. To Spirit, this cycle occurs over the course of a single breath – a breathing out and a breathing in of the universes followed by another breathing out and breathing in of new universes, etc.

The mechanism by which Spirit manifests creation and the gods within it involves several steps;

• The indivisible, one Spirit beyond creation, first dreams a form of Itself that can “exist” within the dream creation. This mirror image of God within creation has a variety of names, including Ishvara, Divine Mother, etc. More on this in the section The Supreme Being.

• To create a universe out of nothing, Ishvara manipulates light vibrations into various forms. Everything in the illusory universe is made of light vibrations that have been “frozen” into various forms. This is done by having the pure, white light emanating from God pass through a “film” that forms the various scenes of creation and projects them into the backdrop of space, just as a cinema projector sends light through a movie film which then creates the movie scenes on a theater screen. In the case of creation, the movie is a three-dimensional projection onto the screen of space. The “film” of creation allows for the projection of countless universes, galaxies, stars, planets, oceans, mountains, trees, plants, animals, human beings, etc. This “film” of creation is known as maya. Maya takes this beam of light of Spirit and creates the magical three dimensional forms in space. But these objects in space are only as real as are the scenes of a movie being played on a theater screen. The rivers, mountains, trees and people seen on a theatre screen are white light that has been passed through a film, projected and focused on the screen, giving the illusion of these forms. Creation’s three dimensional light projections “frozen” in space are similarly phantasms. Appropriately, maya is a Sanskrit word meaning “illusion,” “magic,” “that which is not,” or “a magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem."

• The pure beam of God’s light permeates His creation, but is “veiled” by the film of maya, which creates scenes of shadows and light and projects them onto the “screen” of dimensionless space. The dream universe does not consist of matter but rather frozen vibrations of light which in turn are made from the consciousness of Spirit. The consciousness of Spirit permeates the beam of vibratory light. Creation is essentially consciousness, “materialized” with the immaterial medium of light vibrations.

• As mentioned above, the one God created many, many “gods” as unique, individualized versions of Himself, each endowed with different attributes. Each of these gods originates from Spirit and is the Atman, or soul. The Atman, or soul, is the true nature of “god” and is essentially Spirit. When Spirit wants to play in creation as the individualized gods, It has to “fool” the gods into thinking they are separate entities. It does this with a special form of maya known as avidya.

• Avidya is a form of “cosmic hypnosis” that Spirit uses to “fool” Itself by making the gods (who are really Spirit) think that, when they enter the dream creation, they are separate beings. Part of maya’s projections within the dream creation are the 3-dimensional “frozen” light vibration forms of human beings. These are the forms that the gods “occupy” in order to play within the dream universal structure. Avidya makes the each god falsely believe, at least partially, that it is the human body form and not the soul.

• Within the dream creation, each god in a human form possesses a dual consciousness. It partially believes that it is the human body-form and that the body and the other forms that it sees in its portion of the universe are solid and real. This is the delusive ego-consciousness that is introduced by the hypnosis of avidya. Without each god having the disguise of this false ego-consciousness, God could not pretend to be other than Himself and play within His virtual dream creation as the individualized gods. However, each god also partially remembers its true nature as a soul, or Atman, one with Spirit. This God-consciousness within each god, i.e. the soul or Atman, is a silent witness of creation and a reminder to the god of its true, blissful immortal self beyond creation.

• This dual consciousness of each “human-god” is covered in more detail in the section Our Adventures in Wonderland, in a sub-section entitled Ego-consciousness and God-consciousness.

• Each “human-god” or “god within creation”’ serves a second purpose as a “co-creator”. The Spirit beyond creation changes the scenes of His creation by changing the “film” of maya. Spirit within creation, in the form of gods, co-creates the dream creation from within. Each god is given the power to visualize new structures and forms within creation and bring them into being using the ubiquitous and immaterial medium of light.

• In the original plan or creation, it was the intent that each of the gods would spend time experiencing and playing within the fantasy world and then, after a period, would dissolve the dream body form and become fully united with Spirit, from whence it came. Along the way, something went awry. More on this in the section Our Adventures in Wonderland. 

This sub-section serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it sets out our true nature as gods and indicates who we are, why we are here and our ultimate destination. As we shall see, the return to our ultimate destination has become a more involved process, but the final result is the same.

Secondly, this sub-section introduces how the countless universes were formed and the illusory nature of these dream creations. But this is not consistent with our personal experience of the universe. The Newtonian view of the solid universe and our “normal” human experience of this “solid” world would seem to belie all of the above. However, the view of modern science, as outlined next, is now agreeing that what appears to be a “solid” universe is not so. It is indeed nothing but frozen light.

         “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one” ~ Albert Einstein

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The View of Modern Science