ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

Astrophysics seems to be getting nearer to the Big Bang and the origin of the universes. If there was an origin, there will necessarily be an end – they go together. And ends are followed by new beginnings.

Physics now confirms this, but hadn't we already been given clues about the very beginning? If scientists had followed the clues, we might have got there earlier. A quick look at various traditions proves interesting:-

JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN

'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’

'And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters.'

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.'

‘by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store… (2 Pet 3:5-7 KJV)

Why was the earth without form, and void of what – land, life…? Three things existed at that point – heavens, earth and water. The water wasn’t the seas – they were created in Genesis 1:9.

The Genesis story is difficult to follow if the verses are read sequentially. The ‘heaven’ that God created in the beginning is not the same as the ‘Heaven’ he created in in Genesis 1:6/8.

As a non-Christian, it looks to me as thought the submerged earth is the remains of something earlier but now void and flooded. Time for a new Creation! But how there can be waters under Heaven and waters above is not clear Genesis 1:7.

Neither is it clear how light could be created from darkness, since they are essentially two poles of a continuum. These texts have to be read in the context of the world view of the scribe at the time and the remains of the oral traditions that he had..

‘In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was God.' And a word involves physical vibration.

NORSE

In the beginning, there was only an empty abyss called Ginnungagap. This chaos had no form, no sound and no light. It existed between the mists and cold of Niflheim and the roaring flames and light of Muspelheim.

When the heat and smoke moved across the gap and met the ice and waters, a being was created.

Again here, light and dark were separate, but the mists smack of the latest Physics discoveries..

GREEK

The Greeks were much more interested in the heroes of old, who are dealt with in another post. But they too thought that everything started with Chaos and nothingness.

HINDU

In the Vedas we read:- 'A vast dark ocean washed upon the shores of nothingness and licked the edges of the night. From the depths a humming sound began to tremble. It grew and spread, filling the emptiness and throbbing with energy.'

The sound is known as 'OM' – a vibration/Word of God.

CHINESE

The same theme:- before Heaven and Earth existed, everything was dark and obscure. Nothing was clear, because everything was without form. There were only unclear and vague ideas/possibilities.

ISLAM

According to the Qur'an, the heavens and the earth were undifferentiated - all was just one thing. Then, it split apart and went through a phase when it was smoke-like, swirling around until each principle could conglomerate. – matter and antimatter?

AZTEC

In the beginning there was nothingness. It stayed that way until a god created itself who was able to create dualist reality – good/bad, chaos/order. Ometecuhtli/Omecihuatl, being male and female, was able to have children by itself (what a horrible thought!)

Here again is the emphasis on Dualism.

MODERN PHYSICS

Ancient traditions agree that everything began with a vibration/sound. And now physicists confirm this with String Theory and Vibration, It's taken a while to get to what we were told thousands of years ago!

What happened before the Big Bang? The question is meaningless. There are four dimensions to matter – length, breadth, height, and time. Time only exists because there is matter, and that was created at the Big Bang. According to Einstein, this was a point of infinite density where time and matter had a beginning.

But Physics also teaches us that a particle can have either position or speed, though these are only co-dependent possibilities. The particle actually has neither, until that is - it is observed. At that instant its properties are set. Was this true also of the Big Bang? Were there only possibilities? If so, who or what was the Observer who gave the universe form?

It also teaches that, after the Big Bang, the universe was formless - just a cloud of hydrogen particles until some collided and formed Helium, and thence stars and light.

So ancient cultures, so widely spread in distance and in time, came to similar inductions. – everything was created out of nothing. It all began with a sound/vibration, and so it will end.

And ancient traditions share another thing. Almost all include the Ouroboros (a Greek word meaning 'Great Serpent'.) Jung explains this as a symbol from the Collective Unconscious (like a racial memory).

The Ouroboros eats its own tail to sustain its life, in an eternal cycle of renewal. This symbolizes the cyclic nature of the universe: - creation follows destruction, Life out of Death. And when it appears as a figure of eight – a symbol of eternity, does this suggest that creation depends on the destruction of a previous universe?

Another proposal to explain incredible resemblances between distant civilizations (such as the Mayas and the Egyptians) can be explained by their common contact with a previous widespread culture. Perhaps one that existed on the previous earth before it was rendered without form and void….?