The origin of the universe is a difficult topic. It is difficult because given the information we have to work with no one can really know the conclusions we can draw.
There are certain things in life that we say we almost know with certainty. If we say two and two is four, all of us agree because the labels (2+2=4) constitute definitions (i.e. conventions). We call that analytic knowledge.
However, when we talk about the question of origins, the universe, life, and man, these topics lie outside analytic knowledge. They embrace events in space and in time. Moreover, any time we deal with events in space and time, we are dealing with what is known as synthetic knowledge and we never know with 100 per cent certainty if the conclusions that we draw are correct, that they are true . We only know these to a certain level of confidence.
There are three basic kinds of events in the world. There are (1) reproducible events, (2) unpredictable events, (3) and singular events. If an event is, for example, reproducible it lends itself to scientific inquiry. You can take an apple, drop it off a tree, pick it up, and repeat that repeatedly and make measurements over the distance and the time it falls.
Reproducible events lend themselves to scientific inquiry. Unpredictable events lend themselves to statistical inquiry. These are sometimes called ‘chance events’.
However, the topic of today concerns itself with a singular event, the origin of the universe. Unlike reproducible events that lend themselves to scientific inquiry and unpredictable events that lend themselves to statistic inquiry, singular events lend themselves only to ‘legal’ inquiry. In the statistic sense of the term, science has no ‘jurisdiction’ in a question of origin or a question of destiny.
Much of the very beginnings of knowledge concerning the nature of the universe, its origins, evolution, and demise are derived from the meditations of mystics, who by means of prolonged and severe self-discipline fit their minds to approach these high mysteries and deduce their significance. Immediate apprehension of these very abstract truths is likened by mystics to a flash of light so intense that it leaves the beholder blinded and unable to give any account of his/her vision.
Now, theists attribute the origin of the universe to some sort of transcendent, Intelligent Designer. Atheists (and science) imagine a natural, undirected process by which universes spring into existence spontaneously.
Prior to the 20th century, most atheists (and many scientists) believed the universe was eternal. This changed however as discoveries throughout the 20th century rendered that view untenable. Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) theory of gravity and Edwin Hubble’s (1889-1953) astronomical observations preclude an eternal universe. Cosmologists now believe that the universe began at some definite point (as some singularity and the ensuing Big Bang) in the finite past.
Currently cosmologists say that there are only two legitimate options for the origin of the universe: (1) someone, or something, created the universe (Intelligent Design) or (2) the universe made itself (Random Chance).
The third option, i.e. the universe has always been here, is no longer a feasible, scientific alternative because it contradicts empirical data. No other scientifically plausible theories for the origin of the universe have ever been proposed.
The implications of various 20th century discoveries have put atheists in an untenable position. Logic now requires that they identify ‘an uncontrolled mechanism’ by which the universe could have initiated, designed, created, and developed itself without an Intelligent Designer. Otherwise, intellectual honesty requires the necessity of a supernatural [?] Creator.
New theories for the origin of the universe (M-theory, the ekpyrotic scenario, and Brane cosmology) are intriguing astronomers with the idea that a ‘Big Splat’ preceded the Big Bang. It proposes that there may be an unseen parallel universe to ours. The idea, which is still at the development stage, may provide hints about what happened before our universe exploded into existence some 15 billion (15 x 10-9) years ago.
M-theory does not do away with the Big Bang. The evidence that everything emerged from a ‘fireball’ with a temperature of 10 billion (10 x 10-9) degrees centigrade, expanding on a timescale of one second, is the latest scientific fad.
M-theory looks at ‘events before the Big Bang’, proposing that the universe has 11 dimensions, six of them rolled up into microscopic filaments that can for all intents, and purposes, be ignored. All physical actions of the universe takes place in five-dimensional space. ‘Before the Big Bang occurred’, the universe consisted of two perfectly flat four-dimensional surfaces.
According to cosmologists, one of these sheets is our universe. The other is a ‘hidden’ parallel universe. Some Princeton researchers postulate (the ekpyrotic scenario) that random fluctuations in this unseen companion universe caused it to distort and reach towards our universe. This floater ‘splatted’ into our universe and the energy of the collision was transformed into the matter and energy of our universe in the, so-called, Big Bang.
The ekpyrotic universe, or ekpyrotic scenario, is another cosmological theory of the origin of the universe. The name comes from a Stoic term for ‘out of fire’. The ekpyrotic model of the universe is an alternative to the ‘standard cosmic inflation paradigm’, both of which accept that the ‘standard big bang Lambda-CDM model’ of our universe is an appropriate description up to very early times. The ekpyrotic model is a precursor to, and part of the so-called cyclic model.
‘Brane cosmology’ (a 0-brane is a zero-dimensional point like particle, a 1-brane is a string, a 2-brane is a ‘membrane’, etc.) assumes that the visible universe lies on a 3-dimensional brane, which moves in higher dimensional space (a p-brane – not a ‘pea brain’). Our brane may be one of innumerable others moving through these extra dimensions. The central idea is that our visible, 4-dimensional universe is entirely restricted to a brane inside a higher-dimensional space, called the bulk.
The ekpyrotic scenario was proposed by Justin Khoury and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, Burt Ovrut of Pennsylvania University, and Neil Turok of Cambridge University, in 2001. [Turok was born in 1958, in Johannesburg, South Africa.]
Hence, the ekpyrotic scenario suggests that the visible universe was empty (full of ‘nothingness’) and contracting in the distant past. [How does ‘nothing’ contract?] Then, our brane collided with this other, parallel ‘hidden’ brane, which caused the contracting universe to reverse and begin expanding. Hot matter and radiation was created in the collision, which started the ‘hot big bang’ from which our universe originated. The brane collision, from the four-dimensional perspective of the ‘visible brane’, looks like a ‘big crunch’ followed by a big bang.
Nevertheless, according to the Qabala, in the beginning ... there was Ain, a complete void and vacuum. Not simply ‘nothing’, not even the existence of ‘nothing’ itself – but absolute, incomprehensible ‘nothingness’.
At some point Ain began to ‘concentrate’, or contract, (since we cannot even conceive of it, we cannot say exactly what happened or why) and subsequently ‘created’ Ain Soph, which is infinity in existence, which is to say something forever, even if that something is nothing. Ain is the idea of infinity, while Ain Soph is infinity.
Then Ain Soph ‘moved’ and created Ain Soph Aur, ‘the limitless light’. Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur are all still considered part of the Unmanifest – which are the veils, and behind the veils.
Our universe, as the sum total of all things and living creatures, is conceived as having its primeval origin in this infinite ‘Nothingness’ – Ain (Hebrew for ‘Nothing’), or Para-Brahman (Sanskrit for ‘beyond Brahman’), the Causeless Cause of all manifestation.
The Ain is not a being; it is ‘No-Thing’. That which is incomprehensible, unknown, and unknowable does not exist – at least, to be more accurate, insofar as our own consciousness is concerned.
If we start from before the ‘Centre of All’, the Ultimate Singularity (i.e. before Eheieh – ‘I Am’, the ‘Big Bang’, the Sundering) , the Qabalists informs us that it all starts with the three unfathomable qualities of ‘Nothingness’ that in the dawn of pre-creation somehow ended-up contracting to a singular point. These three unfathomable qualities of ‘Nothingness’ or veils are what are called Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur in Hebrew.
Ancient Hindu metaphysicians saw this ‘Infinite Essential Space’ as a ‘No-Thing’, but not as ‘Nothing’. To them Space was not only ‘an infinite capacity for extending objects’, which is the physical aspect of it – but something more – an ‘Infinite Bare Abstract Subjectivity’, which the human mind was compelled to admit in all of its conceptions, and yet was unable to think of as ‘in-itself’.
Now according to the Qabala, Jehovah, Elohim, and the physical universe were manifested after this ‘Big Bang’ (the Sundering, Eheieh) by the ‘Unmanifested God’ beyond the veils, ‘Nothing’, TAT or (Para-)Brahman in Sanskrit. In ancient Hindu philosophy, Brahman is the Absolute, Tat (‘That’), the Primal Unmanifested Being (the ‘No-Thing’ behind the veils), God in the highest sense of the term. Brahma is the personified conception of Brahman, the Manifested, and Creator, of the Hindu Trinity – on this side of the veils.
Something else now. In a Science Daily article (Cosmologists Predict a Static Universe in 3 Trillion Years, May 24, 2007), it is said that we should now start to think long term. Really long term. Case Western Reserve University physicists in Cleveland, Ohio are theorising that three trillion (3 x 1012) years from now the universe will become ‘static’. Essentially, the information that cosmologists use to gauge our Galaxy’s (the Milky Way) position in the universe will have moved beyond the ‘visible horizon’. What eventually remains will be ‘an island universe’ made from the Milky Way and its nearby galactic Local Group neighbours in an overwhelmingly dark void....
Confused, hell, I think it is time to sit back, suspend your disbelief, and meditate on this. Remember, regular people and scientists are only now starting to catch up with what mystics have been saying for many millennia!
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PS: Just something on ‘Christian mysticism’ from the Encyclopaedia Britannica and other sources.
The most daring forms of Christian mysticism have emphasised the absolute unknowability of God. They suggest that true contact with the transcendent involves going beyond all that we speak of as God – even the Trinity – to an inner ‘God beyond God’ [the God behind the veils], a divine Darkness or Desert in which all distinction is lost. This form of ‘mystical atheism’ has seemed suspicious to established religion; its adherents have usually tried to calm the suspicions of the orthodox by an insistence on the necessity, though incompleteness, of the affirmative ways to God.
The main exponent of this teaching in the early centuries was the Pseudo-Dionysius (circa 5th century), who distinguished ‘the super-essential Godhead’ from all positive terms ascribed to God, even the Trinity (The Divine Names, Chapter 13). Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, also known as pseudo-Denys, is the anonymous theologian and philosopher of the 5th century whose Corpus Areopagiticum (body of works by the Areopagite) was pseudonymously ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite of Acts 17:34. The author was historically believed to be the Areopagite because he claimed acquaintance with biblical characters.
In the West, this tradition is first found in John Scotus Erigena (810-877) and is especially evident in the Rhineland school. The Rhineland mystics were Dominicans such as Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, and Blessed Henry Suso.
According to the German theologian, philosopher, and mystic, Meister Johannes Eckhart (circa 1260- circa 1328), even being and goodness are ‘garments’ or ‘veils’ under which God is hidden. In inviting his hearers to ‘break through’ to the hidden Godhead, he daringly exclaimed, “let us pray to God that we may be free of ‘God’, and that we may apprehend and rejoice in that everlasting truth in which the highest angel and the fly and the soul are equal” (German Sermons, 52).
The notion of the hidden Godhead was renewed in the teaching of the German Christian mystic, Jakob Böhme (1575-1624), who spoke of it as the Ungrund – ‘the great Mystery’, ‘the Abyss,’ ‘the eternal Stillness’. He stressed the fact of divine becoming (in a non-temporal sense): God is eternally the dark mystery of which nothing can be said but ever puts on the nature of light, love, and goodness wherein the divine is revealed to human beings.
