COSMOLOGY

Genesis 1:1-9

King James Version (KJV)

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

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

³ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

⁴ And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

⁵ And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

⁶ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

⁷ And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

⁸ And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

⁹ And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

Genesis 1:1-9

A brief elaboration taken from the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda

Genesis tells us of the universal beginnings.

‘In the beginning God create the heaven and the earth, And the earth was without form, and void (pure consciousness, the creative thoughts of God that are the ideational causes of all beginnings). And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light (the basic building block of manifested forms, the structural essence of God’s triune creation. And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters (creative elements), and let it divide the water from the waters (the subtle causal and astral elements from the gross physical elements). And God made the firmament (fine vibratory etheric space providing a background for gross manifestation and serving as a curtain to divide the physical universe from the overlaying astral realm), and divide the waters which were above the firmament. And God called the firmament Heaven (the astral world secreted behind the etheric space). And God said, Let the waters (gross elements) under the heaven be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear (materialization of gross elements into a physical universe’.

Heaven may be said to consist of three regions: where the heavenly Father lives in vibration less Infinity; where Christ Intelligence reigns and in which the angels (evolved beings) and saints reside; as well as the vibratory sphere of the ideational causal and the astral world.

These heavenly realms, vibratory and transcendent, are only figuratively ‘above’ the gross vibrations of earth ‘below’. They are in fact super-imposed, one on the other, with the finer screened from the denser manifestation through the medium and intervention of the firmament, vibratory etheric space, hiding the astral from the physical manifestation, the causal from the astral and the transcendent Christ Consciousness (the projected consciousness of God immanent in all creation) and Cosmic Consciousness (the Absolute; transcendental Spirit existing beyond creation; God the Father) from the causal.

Without this integration producing a physical instrumentality empowered by astral life, guided by individualized intelligence, all arising from consciousness, there could be no meaningful manifestation.

So the earth and its beings seemingly floating in limitless space as a result of blind forces is not happening; it is highly organized.

The physical cosmos is extremely small in relation to the grander astral cosmos, as is the astral universe in relation to the causal. Both the astral and causal havens are permeated with Christ consciousness and interlacing all is the cosmic consciousness of God, extending into the boundless infinity of blissful Spirit.

Different cultures and sects conceive of heaven according to their cultural, social and environmental habits of thought: a happy hunting ground, a glorious realm of endless pleasure, a kingdom with streets of gold and winged angels making celestial music on harps, a nirvana in which consciousness is extinguished in an everlasting peace.

Jesus said:” In my Father’s house are many mansions” (John 14:2). These many mansions include the magnitude of Spirit, the Christ Consciousness sphere and the diverse higher and lower planes of the causal and astral realms. In general however, the designation of heaven is relegated to the astral world, the immediate heaven relevant to beings on the physical plane.

What happens at death of the physical body?

At death the physical body, a soul garbed in its astral form ascends to the astral heavenly level merited by the balance of that person’s good and evil actions on earth.

It is not that by virtue of death one becomes an exalted angel in heaven. Only those persons who become angelic in spiritual behavior and God communion on earth are able to ascend to the higher regions. Persons of wicked deeds are attracted to lower regions and may experience something like nightmares. The majority of souls awaken in a luminous land of incredible beauty, joy and freedom in an atmosphere of love and well being.

The astral land of light and beauty

The astral realm is a realm of light with astral land, seas, skies, gardens, beings, and the manifestation of day and night. All are made of vibrations of light. Astral gardens of flowers that are planted on the soil of ether surpass human description. The blossoms glow and are ever changing but never fade, adapting themselves to the astral beings. They disappear when not wanted and reappear with new colors and fragrance when desired again.

Astral beings use all their subtle senses as physical man uses them in dreams. The difference is that inhabitants of the astral heavens consciously and at will control their surroundings.

The earth is full of decay and destruction, in the astral world; havoc caused by any clash of inharmonious vibrations could be remedied by mere willing.

The astral realm is many times older than this earth. Every physical object, form and force has an astral counterpart. The astral realm is a factory of life, the world of life force from which this atomic universe is being created.

Birth and death

Birth and death are merely change in consciousness. When the physical body dies, a being loses the consciousness of the flesh and becomes aware of the subtle astral form in the astral world. At a karmically predetermined that astral being loses consciousness of its astral form to undergo a rebirth in the physical world. When the astral garbed soul leaves the astral world at the end of its astral life, it is attracted to parents and an environment on earth (or to similar inhabited planets in others universes) which are suited to the working out of that individual’s good and bad karma.

No one is born of a woman’s body in the astral realm. There is only spiritual marriage in that realm, without co-habitation. If children are desired, they are created by inviting a soul usually departed from earth into an astral body.

The earth memories of astral beings gradually fade, but they meet and recognize many of their loved ones lost to them on earth. So many mothers, fathers, children, friends, spouses, of so many incarnations, that it is difficult to isolate special feelings for one over another. The soul rejoices to embrace them all in its consciousness of universal love.

Advanced astral beings

Advanced astral beings can travel any plane or region of the vast astral heavens, traveling faster that the speed of light. Causal beings transcend time and distance in an instant of thought.

Our human body has become disassociated from its heavenly essence because of its identity with the physical world. But Jesus intimated when he told Nathanael that ‘he would see heaven open and angels ascending and descending on the Son of man’, it was a promise, that man has a divine inheritance to reclaim the omniscience of spiritual perception, that heaven and its wonders can be realized in the here and now.

*Nathanael said to him,’ whence knowest thou me?’Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.’ Nathanael answered and said unto him,’ Rabbi, thou art the son of God; thou art the King of Israel’.

                                                          (John 1:48-49)

A Purposeful Life

What is life? It can be said, that it is a stream of experiences, of happiness and unhappiness and whatever comes in between.

What is an experience? It is one’s relationship to the world, I as the subject, the world as the object. In other words, when the subject I contacts the world, there arises an experience.

The effect of science on the world

Scientists have focused on the world, with the intention of making it a better place. Yet despite all the advances and comfort it has achieved, the level of stress and anxiety in the world has not been reduced, in fact it has drastically increased.

What went wrong?

How have the thinkers and sages viewed the world? They have focused on the subject, on you and me’, on the human potential by asking the question, how can one find happiness in a world of constant change?

They suggested that to function well in life we need to have motivation, we need to be inspired, but from where can we get our inspiration? They have concluded that to be motivated and inspired, one needs to have purpose in life, a high ideal, beyond one’s self interest. We know that we all have different purposes in life; ideally they are based on our intrinsic nature.

How do we know, that our purpose is in accord with our intrinsic nature? We know it, while pursuing our goal, we feel happy and fulfilled, whereas without purpose, without inspiration, life is dull and lethargic.

What is happiness?

Is happiness in the world, or is it in us? As an example let’s take a look at people eating a particular food. One person may like it, yet another will dislike it. So is the enjoyment in the food, or is it in us? The answer may be obvious, but is it? What does this reveal?

It tells us, that happiness and sorrow is not in the objective world, it is in how we relate to the world. If our mind is happy the world is fine, if our mind is unhappy the world is a hostile place.

Going still deeper, happiness is not in our personality, it is of our very nature. We are happiness, we are love.

Why then are we seeking happiness in the world?

We seek it in the world out of sheer ignorance. This reminds me of the story of two friends going for a stroll in the evening. There is a bright full moon. One says to the other: I just love the bright light shining from the moon. The other replies, there is no light in the moon. The friend gets all upset and says, what do you mean, I see the moonlight and so do you. Where after his companion tells him that the light he perceives in the moon is nothing but a reflection of the sun.

What do the wise say tell us about happiness?

The wise say it is good to work in the world out of happiness and love, whereas the unwise work in the world for happiness.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said: ‘It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impassible to find it anywhere else’.

We need to realize, that spirituality in whatever form we individually perceive it, is not a passive endeavor, but rather a means for anyone who wants to make life meaningful.

                                              

                                               

                                               

Our true nature                    VASANA

                 

                BODY                   MIND                     INTELLECT

                

                PERCEIVE R       FEELER                  THINKER

                

                OBJECT              EMOTION              THOUGHTS

               

                From gross to subtle

Notes:

When we identify with the body, we become the perceiver of the sense objects.

When we identify with the mind, we become the feeler of the emotions.

When we identify with the intellect, we become the thinker of different thoughts.

By saying, this is my body, these are my feelings, these are my thoughts, the question to be answered is, who is making these statements? It is the real I, the Self.

Sat, Chit, Ananda, Ever Existing, Ever Conscious, Bliss

We have all these great faculties to fulfill our obligations, what really matters is, how we go about fulfilling the.

Do we have a clear understanding of objective Reality?

According to idealism, the world is a world within the mind. Physical objects do not have any independent objective existence. Rather they exist as thoughts in the mind of the perceiver. They arise as bubbles in the mind as things but have subjective existence only.

To understand this we have to contrast it with the opposite point of view, which is called realism. In common sense understanding naive realism is the view of reality that we all hold. We believe that objects exist just outside ourselves, that they have independent objective existence and that they are made of a substance called matter. If we pick up a rock and hold it in our hand, it is difficult to believe, that it is an idea in our mind.

All science is based on the assumption that we perceive the world outside through the senses. Even abstract physics comes down to observation.

The problem is that we doubt the evidence of the sense as we realize that things are not always what they seem to be. Science ends and philosophy begins, when we start to question the process and begin to mistrust the evidence of the senses.

We all have to ask, do things exist outside of our minds. Empirical objects are only terms of our consciousness. The outer world is only a play of our minds. We create our world in our mind in the so called waking state. Yet we must also realize that the objects in our waking and dream state are similar, even though we think that there is a radical difference between the waking and the dream state, but is it so?

It is helpful for us to compare the waking and the dream state, we will find that there is time, sensation, future, objects, a sense of cause and effect; we even have subjective thoughts in both states.

Modern analysis shows that everything in dream takes about the same time as in the waking state. There is no way to distinguish the waking from the dream state. The question we now have to ask is, am I now dreaming? Did I just now dream up this world?

This reminds me of what Yogananda said: ‘when we leave this world we will realize that what we had experienced was just a dream’.

According to subjective realism, we are dreaming our own dream.

According to subjective idealism, each of us creates his own world.

New age teachers claim also that we create our own reality, which implies that the ego alone exists.

Vedanta claims that we do not create our own reality. Shankara refutes the idea of New age teachers and that of the Buddhists which claim that we create our own reality. He states, the jiva, the individual being fabricates this world (jiva denotes the individual being, the Atman the cosmic Self).

Vedanta objective idealism says this world is dependent on a conscious perceiver. Although the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm, it is not the microcosm, not the individual that is the perceiver. It is not the jiva, the apparent man, the individual that creates the world. It is the Atman, the cosmic man, the Self, the purusha that is the creator of the world.

We are a reflection of a cosmic me, which we call God. This world is a dream in the mind of god. God is the cosmic dreamer. We are just part of His dream.

Our dreams are just castles in the air, so is the world viewed by the wise. We do not dream up the world, we do not create our own reality. This world is as unreal as a dream.

We know that dreams are unreal, what we need to learn is that the waking state is also unreal. There is a higher reality. When we wake up to the higher truth, this world will disappear, just as it does in deep meditation. If we are seeking the truth, until we give up the idea that the world is the ultimate reality, the mind will continue to focus on objects outside itself and we will pursue the world of appearance.

In order to realize God, we have to go beyond this world of names and forms behind and accept that there is a higher reality to attain.

That alone is real which reveals itself, by itself, which is eternal and unchangeable.

Definitions

Subjective idealism, a philosophy based on the premise that nothing exists except minds and spirits and their perceptions or ideas. A person experiences material things, but their existence is not independent of the perceiving mind; material things are thus mere perceptions. The reality of the outside world is contingent on a knower. The 18th-century Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley succinctly formulated his fundamental proposition thus: “To be is to be perceived”.

Objective idealism (Vedanta) is an idealistic metaphysics that postulates that there is in an important sense only one perceiver and that this perceiver is one with that which is perceived. One important advocate of such metaphysics are, Josiah Royce and G. W. F. Hegel, who were indifferent "whether anybody calls all this Theism or Pantheism". Plato is regarded as one of the earliest representatives of objective idealism. It is distinct from the subjective idealism of George Berkeley.