As inconceivable as it appears, does everything need an origin, a beginning? Or, could some acts of apparent creation be akin to spontaneous combustion? What if, instead of a Void of nothingness, there has existed, forever and ever, an uncreated Void – containing not vortices, fields or forces (as various scientists have asserted over the years) – but an insubstantial fragrance-like aether (as has been claimed recently by scientists who are not committed to a mechanistic material universe)?
Is it any more credible to accept all space being filled with this seemingly insubstantial aether, from which (ultimately) arrived all kinds of matter, forces, and whatever else we have identified, than to accept that a tiniest speck of something (without any origin), enabled by an inherent vast blast of energy (source-less?) formed the universe that we think we know? The Big Bang Theory is not credible unless it is a temporary facet of the kind of cosmology offered by Hinduism; and that is impossible to prove or disprove! Yet, cycles of bangs and crunches in the physical realm make sense of a kind; pity about the ‘suspension’ of human existence during the cyclical periods when the whole machinery is running down. But, why not? Do we know any better?
Then, there is that other theory about the rise of mankind to head the pantheon of fauna. That is another theory based on more belief. The alleged creation of ‘the Adam’ (refer Genesis in the Bible; and the Sumerian writings of many centuries earlier from which it seems to have been drawn) raises interesting questions, as do such simple matters as the ability of the chameleon to change the colouration of its hide at will; or, is it an automatic reaction? But, how did it evolve? By chance?
The bottom line in this speculation about origins is how an unstructured aether can result in the complex structures (with their interconnecting forces) constituting the universe we inhabit.
What then of the other dimensions of existence which apparently cross the boundaries of our universe? Are they intersecting overlays? Our spirit world must be one of these dimensions. Since indubitably it exists, our ‘Hereafter’ has to be real!
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 