The Beginning of Us All

In a way the ‘truth is out there’. It is staring us in the face, but we have been looking at the surface instead of the depths. So the first thing that is obvious is that none of have existence outside of the universe. It is so obvious yet it hardly ever is mention in connection with human life. Let us say it again – you have no existence outside of the existence of the universe.

I believe most people understand that without the sun pouring out its energy allowing plant growth we could not exist. And of course that is simplifying the interrelationship between the sun and the planets, and the evolution of our solar system.

So we need to look at the beginnings of the universe and how its complexity developed. This beginning we know as the Big Bang. But in fact that wasn’t the beginning. There was something before that of great importance. If you look at the diagram you will see at the far left it says, Time Begins. In fact it should have said Time and Space begins. The Big Bang is only the beginning of time and space; before that there was no time and space. It is a difficult concept for us limited as we are to living in time and space with senses that are not even capable of seeing most of what is taking place around us. Perhaps the nearest we can get to describing this condition is to say it has no beginning and no end.

Considering this is our beginning, our birth place, it is important to get a feel for it. We are so used to thinking in shapes and forms, such as our bodies, yet if this is where it all came from, somewhere it is important to realise that this condition is without form and appears unknowable to us. We understand things through opposites – light and darkness, big and small, good and bad; but in the very ground of our universe there are no opposites, no good or bad, no time and space. As it says in the Rig Veda –

Then neither Being nor Not-Being was

Nor atmosphere, nor firmament,

Nor what is beyond.

Obviously religions have struggled with the ground of being. In Genesis the first thing it says according to the King James Version is:

V. 2 And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Another translation of this is:

“The universe was chaotic and without form. All the elements of existence were in chaos and unknown. But the creative forces extended into the unformed.”

1 – We cannot define, scientifically or otherwise, the original state of the universe, other than saying it is the central reality from which all else emerged. Even time and space did not exist in the primal state.

2 – Although this central reality is indefinable, it is observably the ground upon which all existence has emerged.

The View from the Eye of Dreams

Of course one could argue this out scientifically, but that is not the aim of this book. So I offer what is a fantastic view of our beginnings and our place in the cosmos. And here it is, written as well as could be from such a vision.

Then the whole experience shifted and my awareness was filled with the sense of knowing or meeting the beginning of things. Once more a Being stood before me. Not as it were in a body, but I was overwhelmed by the presence of a great being that appeared to be a part of all things and all time. I felt it was the immense unified awareness of all humanity that lifted up my consciousness, causing me to feel as if my awareness also spread over the immensity of time, and from this condition I was shown the beginning of things.

I cannot say I saw this, more that I experienced the condition of the beginning. And this condition was the gathering together of what I understood to be a whole universe that had previously existed. All that had existed had come to such unity that although this beginning was physical, it was also, in its unity, a being. It had awareness.

As I experienced this I felt as if a resolution between science and religion had taken place in me. For here was something like the cosmic egg science suggests preceded the ‘big bang’. But what had been left out, I realised, was this consciousness, this immense being.

In retrospect, it also suggests to me the difficult question of Elohim being many beings and yet one. For all life had here found a unity in one immense being beyond my comprehension. It was, in fact, difficult to grasp because I was overcome by emotion as I witnessed this.

As I opened to this enormous perception, there was a deepening of understanding, in which I was aided my comprehension. For I realised that the oneness or unity of this being was unbroken. It was everything, and nothing could exist outside of it. Even if it were to create anything, that thing would not have existence outside of the one.

This condition of ‘all-one’ had led to a form of aloneness. This was as near as my human understanding could grasp. Christ in fact said to me – ‘You must understand, this is your perception of it.’

Out of this aloneness, this great consciousness had longed that other beings might exist. But in its present form this was impossible. Then I understood something that tore my heart to pieces, as it still does today when I dwell on the memory of the experience. This being purposefully went about destroying itself so that our present universe – we – might have existence. It was such a wondrous action for it was done in such a way, with such skill, with such love and self-sacrifice, such art and science, that its very death was a magnificent creative act. In other words its death struck into action forces and effects that created the universe in all its variety. This death is what we know as the ‘big bang’. The very special circumstances of the ‘death’ set in motion the forces that brought about a very particular universe. Without the particular influences set in motion there could easily have been a universe without any ‘space’ for individual awareness. It could have been a universe where everything was purely automated. It could have been many things.

As I experienced this, I realised that everything that exists is a part of that wondrous being. There is nothing that is not of its love. So that whatever arises in the universe arises out of, and as, THAT. The human sense of God is a realisation of the very substance of our own existence. The awe we might feel is from an intuition of what has been given us as our own being.

And as that great unity of energy and consciousness died, its very last impulse was for those new beings that might arise from its death. The impulse that flashed out we call love. It flashed through the universe permeating its every particle, in a way that we cannot yet perceive, but which is like a touch upon the pulsating chaotic movements of particles and lives.

We are the seeds of that love. We are God. And in our small portion of the universe, we face a particular lesson through the shortness of our bodily lives. We face death. Yet that is the greatest of things. For that is the heart of everything, the very act of love out of which our lives have been formed. If we discover the secret of that, we discover our creator and eternal nature.

Recent cosmological theories based on astronomical observations say that we exist in what is called an anthropic universe. In other words without the universe being fined tuned the way it is, human life, life as a whole, could not exist. (73) Add to this what has been suggested by the deep explorers of awareness, that consciousness is at the very core of the universe and behind all its phenomena, then we can say that innate in the fundamental consciousness of the universe is the potential leading to our existence. That is not to say our actual design was part of the program. But the possibility of life forms, of intelligence and self awareness was there and could express in the right circumstances – and our universe and our solar system and Earth provided the right circumstances.

That is just a clumsy way of trying to grasp and bring down to manageable concepts the enormity of the cosmos we live in and the fact of our existence. The same can be said for the statement in quantum mechanics that we are co–creators in this world, in this universe. We are still stumbling toward an understanding of how and in what way. (72) But that is a part of the beauty of our experience – we are always discovering and there is always more to discover.

Another part of the big picture is that as intelligence or consciousness is at the very ground of our universe, and therefore of all that is in it, then everything has intelligence and being of some sort, or in some way. This leads on to the possibility that we are only one of the creatures sharing this universe, and that intelligence can exist at various levels and in different ways or dimensions. It is only the physical forms that filters that immense consciousness.

Some points worth remembering are that is you if you look at the scientific diagram of the Big Bang you will see that at the beginning, although there was unimaginably high temperature there was not light – remember that in Genesis it said early on in the creation story, “Let there be light”. And at a certain point in the scientific creation story it says in section 5, “Light can finally shine”.

Also in the creation story told in Genesis it says it took seven days (periods of time) for our universe to be created. Then if we look at the scientific story of creation it shows that in section 7 it says that was the start of the universe we could live in after seven periods of activity.