Cosmic Manifestation

God created the heaven and the earth says the Bible. He said, "Let there be light”.

Modern science, such as astronomy, physics and biology, is concerned with cosmological arrangements of the universe. When speaking of molecules, atoms, electrons and electromagnetic forces in scientific language, we are talking of cosmology. When astronomers tell us that the Big Bang took place at the origin of things and nebular dust of the cosmos spread itself into the Milky Way, the galaxies, the many stars of which the Sun is one, and so the planets came about and there was a gradual arising of life on Earth from a state of bacteria, amphibians, etc., to animals, to the human state, etc. we are speaking of cosmology. Any theory, any doctrine or system of thinking which discusses the rising of evolutes from original causes, in any manner whatsoever, either by way of descent or ascent, is called cosmology. The doctrine of the arrangement, the coming and the going of things in the universe, is cosmology.

Sankhya

According to the Sankhya, the supreme intelligent principle is Purusha. It is infinite in its nature, all-pervading; everywhere present. It is Consciousness. This consciousness, this supreme Purusha is absolutely independent, it is also called Kaivalya, liberation, freedom, moksha, infinite all-pervading, omnipresent in its being. It is the true nature of pure Being, which is the true nature of every one of us also.

We are the Purusha. The Purusha does not mean a male or a female; it has no gender, no sex, no form, and no shape. It is not in space, not in time, and it is not anything we or anyone can think of or conceive. It is radiance which is spread out everywhere. It is the essence of everyone and everything.

The Sankhya postulates the beginning of an objective universe. This marks the beginning of creation.

In theological or religious language, we may say it is the will of God operating.

What is meant by the will of God? It is God intensely thinking the potentiality of an objective creation.

This is described in a dramatic manner in certain other scriptures such as the Upanishads, and in larger concrete details in the epics and the puranas of India.

Now we are concerned with the basic factors involved in Sankhya and Vedanta.

It is a cosmic will, cosmic thought, and cosmic idea with the potentiality of the future form that the creation has to take. This can be made clearer by looking at an artist who paints a picture. What does he do? He has an idea in his mind about the way in which the picture should appear. This idea of the form of the painting, which is to take a concrete shape afterwards, is the beginning of the creation of the picture.

God, the supreme Purusha, the ultimate Reality, is said to be associated with the material universe. When we use the word ‘material’, we have to be very cautious. It does not mean matter such as brick, stone and wood. It means pure possibility of being, objectively aware, just as when modern physicists speak of a material universe they do not mean the universe of brick and mortar, they mean an indescribable, inconceivable potentiality of what they call the space-time continuum.

Much more subtle is this state where we try to understand the pure ideation in the mind of the Supreme Being of the possible future manifestation of the universe.

First the artist conceives the pattern of the picture, and in the second stage this idea is projected on the canvas in the form of drawing outlines with a pencil. Then the artist touches these outlines with the necessary paint, making it more visible; and finally, in the end, he fills it with diverse colors. Then we say, here is the beautiful painting, but it originated in the thought of the artist; it was already there.

As for the creation of the universe, it is said that the process took place in a similar manner. In the beginning it was only an idea, but that idea was superior to the material content. We should not be under the impression that ideas or abstractions are unreal. We are accustomed to think in terms of hard substances so much that we find it difficult to imagine that there can be a non-material existence.

When modern science tells us that the universe is not material, we do not understand what they are saying. They say that the so-called imperceptible mathematical universe is the original universe of which what we perceive with our senses is just a shadow. The mathematical point-events, the abstract space-time continuum, which is not space and time, but something more than that, is the original archetype which casts a shadow, as it were, in the form of this concrete universe.

Can we imagine that concrete things are shadows of ideas? Our mind cannot understand this, and will not accept it, because we are prone to think in concrete objective forms only.

For us, money means currency notes, a coin, a metal piece which we can touch with our hands. But money does not mean that which we touch with our hands; it is a value of purchase which is in the idea of people only. Money is in the heads of people, it is not outside. If the ideas of give and take, commercial valuation and mutual agreement among people do not exist, paper notes and coins will have no value. Likewise, there are many things in this world which are apparently concrete and substantial, but are really ideas only. Organizations are ideas, governments are ideas, monetary systems are ideas, our loves and hatreds are also ideas, our satisfactions are ideas, our sorrows are ideas; finally, we will find there is nothing anywhere except ideas. Yet we believe that the world is nothing but concrete bricks, cement, iron, wood, etc., which it is not.

Again coming to the point of the origin of the universe, the substantial super-substantial ideation seems to be the beginning of all things. This potency, latency, or the hidden condition of a future universe is, according to Sankhya, called mahat, the great being filled with the idea of the universe, cosmically aware.

For all practical purposes, this is the God we are thinking of in religion. What Sankhya calls mahat is cosmic existence, which assumes such an intensive self-awareness of its own universal being that, in the Sankhya terminology, it is further designated as Ahamkara (ego).

Vedanta uses another set of terms altogether, the series is described in a similar manner as Brahman and Ishvara. Though the Supreme Being that Sankhya calls Purusha cannot be classically identified with the Brahman of Vedanta, it virtually means the same thing. And the objective content of this supreme Brahman as a potentiality of future creation is Ishvara, almost identical with what the Sankhya calls the mahat and ahamkara.

Let God do anything, we are concerned with our difficulties only. Now, what is our problem? God has created the universe, they say. The Vedas say this, the Upanishad says this, and the Bible says this. Let it be so, but what does it matter to us now?

Our difficulties are real to us. What has happened to us actually, now? Why are we in this condition, if God created this world in this manner? We will have to study this further on.

Our observation of things, our understanding of anything in this world, is restricted to our state of consciousness. Often we see things the way we want to see them and in accordance with our conditioned mind

If we like something very much, we are disturbed when something happens to it. The object that we love deeply can upset our mind or raise our mind to heights of joy, as the case may be.

My son, my daughter, my wife, my husband, my property and so many my-things, which are dear to me whatever circumstance these dear objects are placed, may react upon us so powerfully that it would appear that we ourselves are experiencing these conditions. If the person is happy, I am happy; if it dies, I also die. This happens even in a psychological attachment of what we call intense longing, love, affection, craving, and so on.

Deeper is the mistake that has taken place in us in our attachment to this body and the inner constituents. We do not merely love our body and these layers of ours as we love anything in this world, but this attachment of our true being to this body-mind complex has become so intense, that it is not possible to regard it as something outside us. It is not that we merely love the body and the mind and our personality, we are the body and the mind and everything that it is.

We can imagine the difficulty that we may have to face in freeing ourselves from this misconceived relationship with what we really are not. This will also explain how difficult yoga practice is. We are dealing with your own self, the only thing which we can never understand fully.

These conditioning layers of our personality compel us to visualize the whole of creation also in a corresponding series of gradations. Whether or not the universe is made up of layers or planes, it matters little to us, because for us they are made in that way because the world of perception is real and meaningful to the extent to which it becomes a content of our consciousness; otherwise, we are not concerned with it in any manner.

Therefore, in the practice of yoga or, for the matter, in our dealings of anything, we are concerned with our own world, not the world as it is in itself. Nobody knows what the world is, as it is in itself; but there is a world with which we are connected, which we have wound around ourselves as a silkworm winds a cocoon around itself, and we are very much concerned with it. This world is the subject of our study. Our bondage is that entanglement which is a part of our conscious experience. That which is not a part of our experience does not become a part of our study or concern in any manner.

Thus, a psychological necessity arisen on account of the conjunction of our consciousness with this psychophysical personality makes it also necessary for us to conceive a corresponding cosmic series of layers of being. The world which is the macrocosm is organically related to us as the microcosm, as a specimen of the cosmos. Each individual, each organism, each particle of sand or atom is a symbol of the whole cosmos. Everything that is in the universe can be found in one sand particle, in one particle of anything, even in an atom.

The individual setup is what we are. It has been somehow given the position of an observer of the external universe. In a highly metaphysical sense, we may say, in considering ourselves as observers of the universe. The object, so-called, has managed to remain outside the subjective consciousness. The Purusha has become mixed up with Prakriti; consciousness is entangled in matter, and according to one system of yoga at least, freedom or liberation consists in the extrication of the consciousness from its involvement in matter, Purusha freeing himself from Prakriti-consciousness, not feeling the necessity to see things only through the prism of individuality.

When we understand things from a higher perspective, we know through the Self, the Atman, we have intuitional knowledge. Intuition is direct apprehension of Reality, and that is the act of the soul, the Atman, the Self, the True Being – Pure Consciousness. But in ordinary circumstances of our life, this does not happen. We have no intuition because the Soul, the Atman, Consciousness, the true Being of ours beholds the fact of the universe through the medium of our psychophysical individuality – this body, this mind, and anything that we are made of.

In the description of the universe, Sankhya and the Vedanta are in agreement, except in their terminology. They have different ways of describing conditions and stages of experience, but the fact remains the same.

When we refer to the bible, we say God is the creator. Yoga gives a more detailed explanation of the Cosmic Process. It states:

One Power, Life and Being is responsible for the manifestation, maintenance and transformation of nature. This Reality is referred to variously by sages and seers. A term commonly used is Consciousness – as self existent, self aware and self referring. Consciousness requires no object to support its existence; it is simultaneously the knower, and the known. Consciousness can be known about by objective and subjective analysis, but it cannot be fully comprehended by direct perception.