Who created the universe? How and why it happened ?
Right from my childhood, I was intrigued and fascinated by these questions. At different stages in life, I got different answers.
When I was just a kid, I was told that God created this world. Also that nobody can know how God came to be there in the first place and how or why He created this world, because man cannot question God. You can only be a loyal subject and God is the unquestionable emperor. Perhaps you can perform Tapas or rigorous meditations and if you evince single-minded devotion, God will condescend and appear before you to answer any such queries. I tried meditation, devotional prayers etc in my own way, but nothing happened. It didn’t take long for me to realize that if one is really satisfied with these answers given to a kid, he would remain only a kid although his life.
During school and college days, I took special interest in Physics, which gave these answers – The universe started with a big bang approximately around 15 billion years ago. Initially it was all energy completely concentrated and compressed as if in a very tiny capsule. It exploded as a big bang, forming matter as galaxies due to mass-energy equivalence and started expanding. Laws of gravitation, motion etc came into force. The universe is still expanding. There are billions of galaxies and each galaxy has billions of stars. In one of the galaxies called Milky Way, the star named Sun has a planet called Earth orbiting around it, with conditions favorable for life to evolve from organic matter on the surface of earth. From primitive life of planets and animals, man eventually came on the scene on earth as per the Darwin’s theory of evolution. Then if you ask how the primal energy itself came to be there in the first place, the answer by Physics is in the law of conservation of energy, the First law of Thermodynamics which states that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. Energy in some form has all along been there. There was never a time when there was nothing, because time, space, matter, energy and the laws of Physics are all inter related and dependent on each other to exist. As per these scientific answers, science does not need a God or a creator to explain this universe. That would also explain why most of the scientists nowadays are atheists. However as science is based on the assumption that space, time, matter or energy had all existed all along, it is as good as saying that this universe had existed all along and it was not created at all.
Not fully satisfied with the answers given by Physics, I took to the study of Advaita purely from a logical angle, which involved fully the study of human mind in the analysis of the universe. While science has stressed that space, time, energy and matter cannot exist independent of each other, Advaita goes one step further. Advaita has established that, not only time, space and matter cannot exist independent of each other; they also cannot exist independent of the human mind or self. Existence of any entity, whether it is space, time, matter or energy is only a mental concept or a concept of the self. Self here means the individual’s mind or awareness which is the source of all thoughts, concepts etc. Reality is in fact virtual and everything is only conceptual. So the universe is solely observer dependent or in other words it is the work of the human mind and the universe as a whole is the human mind or self only. It is only an illusion or the imagination or the concept of mind or self. There is no need absolutely to explain fully an illusion or imagination, as it is a thing of the mind. To quote Albert Einstein at this juncture – ‘Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one’. While a Physicist will insist that the universe is self-sustaining and will exist independent of man, the Advaitin will aver that the universe is self sustaining because it is sustained only by the self or mind.
Actually underlying the questions,’ Who created the universe?’ How and why it happened’ etc, there are some assumptions made by us which are basically wrong. The foremost being that there was complete void initially and then the universe came on the scene somehow. This assumption is wrong because total void could not have been there at anytime, in the absence of the mind. And when mind is around, there is no void in the first place. So it is mind all the way and nothing else. You may ask what existed before mind emerged on the scene? Did not this world exist with your parents before you were born? What happens after death when mind ceases to function? etc. But these questions also are basically wrong, fallacious and untenable, because even the question of what things existed or will exist in the absence of mind, cannot arise in the absence of mind. In other words, even the question of existence of any entity in the absence of mind cannot arise, because mind alone can raise queries and can also answer them. As the question cannot arise, this question of what existed before mind emerged or what happens after death is also wrong.
The biggest paradox is actually the working of the mind. When our mind raises these questions, we imagine our mind to be in some distant corner of the universe with total void all around and curiously trying to see how the universe unfolds itself from this void. We know just too well that such imagination is mere fantasy and nothing else. The problem is that our mind is wired or programmed in such a way to inevitably fantasize and raise these questions. As the questions are wrong, the answers we get do not satisfy us at all.
So it turns out that mind or self is not the abject slave after all, but in fact is the unquestioned emperor. Mind is everything. Mind is also the subject and is also the object and is also the emperor. You may ask what purpose is served by the existence of this mind? Why should it exist at all? Actually such questions are not applicable to the mind. The question of why anything exists is applicable only to an object or entity, which does not exist in the first place, and then it is brought onto the scene or existence later. For example take a building. The building was not there initially and then later constructed, obviously to accommodate people or something else. This is not the case with mind in view of the fact that the question of non-existence of mind is fallacious, as we have explained earlier. So again these questions are wrong. There is no cosmic motive behind existence other than what you can conjure up for yourself.
You may also ask some further crucial questions like - Why my neighbour is endowed with more wealth compared to me, lives in a bigger home, has a bigger car and has a more beautiful wife etc. Why some people suffer like hell in this life and some people seem to enjoy all the fruits of life? Is it not due to destiny, or Karma, or the actions in your previous birth etc? This question is actually based on total ignorance. When mind happens to be the whole universe, why should you try to acquire more wealth than your neighbour? Where is the need for it anyway? Just like the fact that pleasure is short-lived, pain is also short-lived. Nothing is going to remain the same. It is just chance that some suffer a lot and some do not. The tragedy of our life is that all good things come to an end inevitably; but the saving grace is that all bad things also come to an end inevitably. There is no need to fantasize about Karma or previous births, in order to find an explanation. Here I would like to quote Robert Frost who said - "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
It is quite possible that one may not agree with the above analysis. The mind of an individual is very unique and the functioning of mind is bound to vary from person to person. There is no such thing like absolute truth because what convinces you alone is truth. Truth is intensely personal and is bound to vary from mind to mind and from person to person. That is the reason why we have different schools of thoughts in the world. We have atheists, agnostics, religious fundamentalists, orthodox, conservative, superstitious, pure rationalists, hosts of Swamijis or Gurujis with their own cult and faithful bands of followers etc.
Let us learn to live our short life with love and compassion, with humility and simplicity and with a service motive to help fellow humans, armed with the realisation that the universe is only a bubble and it is only a thing of the human mind and it is bound to vanish altogether sooner or later.
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