A BANGINGLY BIG QUESTION
Looking at what all the galaxies and what not are doing right now, scientists have come to the conclusion that the physical universe started in a very big bang, a long long time ago. That’s the current creation myth of the scientific worldview.
But what’s the evidence? Well, for a start, everything appears to be expanding, as if it had all come out of one very small, still point. All the stars and galaxies and so on (which are believed to have formed later from all the flying debris) seem to be moving away from each other, and to have gone on evolving into supernovas, red giants, white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, neutron stars, X-ray stars, pulsars, black holes, and a host of other fascinating whizz-bangs up there. Then there’s a sort of glow in the vast spaces between the stars that is believed to be heat radiation left over from the big bang.
And anyway, so the reasoning goes, how did all those stars and things get there in the first place? Everything has to start at some point in time, doesn’t it? If everything came out of one still point, and has been expanding and evolving since then, they reckon that it all started about fourteen or fifteen billion years ago, and that our solar system is about four and a half billion years old. There’s a lot of supporting data for these timescales too. So it’s all pretty convincing stuff.
But hang on. Before the big bang, there was no time, and no space either. And we are beings, units of being, remember, drops of the great Ocean of Being, the little worlds through which He views His creation. And not only that, but our perception of the universe is a human perception, which has no greater claim to be the real material reality than that of a badger, or a bat, or a bumblebee. And those guys are definitely not into galaxies and big bangs, and all that.
Moreover, it is through Being, through consciousness, that the universe is spun into existence along the Axis of Being. Matter only exists as a part of the shared perception of beings at the material level. So can there be matter without beings to perceive it, as there would have been if things had begun with a big bang? We’ve been into all that, and it’s pretty heady stuff!
So … umm … maybe the beings (not necessarily organic life forms at that stage), and space, and a very subtle form of matter all came into existence simultaneously, and then gradually became denser with the passage of time? And the seemingly expanding universe and the apparent afterglow of the big bang have other explanations (of which several have been suggested)? Or maybe there’s some truth in the big bang scenario, but it’s not the whole picture?
It’s impossible to be completely certain, of course, as any honest scientist will agree. Scientific theories are always provisional, awaiting a better description of things. Big bang theory is only a speculation, which still leaves open the huge question of what was going on before the primeval pyrotechnics, before space and time began. Where did everything come from? From Nothing? From Silence? From Stillness? From pure Being? I have no quarrel with that. Being is certainly outside of space and time. But how? How does the prior existence of Being or Consciousness fit into the picture? That’s the real question. And how can there be a beginning to time?
We’ll go round in circles forever, of course, seeking a solution to this conundrum. But to my mind, any understanding of how the material universe came into existence has to include the principle of Being, for this is what still sustains it right now, and what gives energy to so-called empty space. The creative process is still going on. It didn’t stop 14 or 15 billion years ago.
Moreover, any understanding of the origins of time and space (and all who sail in them) must include how the mind and intellect exist as well – the very faculties that are trying to do the understanding. So in the end, maybe we just have to admit that a part of Being cannot understand the whole of Being, and that the full story of our origins will always remain a mystery to human intellectual understanding.
To truly comprehend how the dance goes on, and the nature of our part in it, we need an altogether different kind of knowing that encompasses consciousness and matter, and the primal Source of it all. To really see what’s going on, we have to escape from the screen of our projected reality, and find our way up the beam of light to its Source in the projector. We have got to climb the Axis of Being within ourselves. We’ve been here before, I think!