IN THE BEGINNING: THE COSMIC EGG? / Hinduism and the ‘Big Bang’
Previous Chapters / http://www.signsoftheend.net/Creation/Overview.html
The subject of the origins of the Universe, and of life has been studied by man for many millennia. The concept of the ‘cosmic egg’ as the source from which the Universe originated is an ancient one. Over some 3000 years, the Hindus have developed a rather sophisticated theology whereby they have come to understand the creation process on such a level that even science has borrowed heavily from their philosophies in the field of the theories of origins such as the ‘Big Bang’ theory. The whole field of Quantum Physics that attempts to explain the nature of the Universe is more of a Hindu religious philosophy than it is a science. It is an open secret that physics of the origins of the Universe is much more of a philosophy, and admitted as such by leading proponents of theories of origins, particularly the ‘Big Bang’. Hindu theologies and other mythologies that have heavily influenced the present scientific models for origins, claim the ‘cosmic egg’, defined below as the beginning of creation, an ancient concept that has birthed modern ‘cosmology’ and quantum physics.
From Wikipedia: A world egg or cosmic egg is a mythological motif found in the creation myths of many cultures and civilizations. Typically, the world egg is a beginning of some sort, and the universe or some primordial being comes into existence by "hatching" from the egg.
‘COSMIC EGG’ MYTHOLOGY IN HINDUISM
The following quotes are from the ancient writings of the ‘Hindus’ that address the subject of the origins, and of the nature of the Universe. The comments in italics below the “quote” are explanatory notes that expound on the text being quoted.
- The whole universe including sun, moon, planets, and galaxies was all inside the egg...(Vayu Purana 4.74-75)
The Vayu Purana deals with the following topics: creation and re-creation of the universe; this ancient Sanskrit text describes the whole Universe as rising out of the ‘cosmic egg’. The only scientific explanation for such a claim is that the ‘cosmic egg’ itself was a single cell of living matter that was encoded with the language of creation, the DNA of the Universe much as a human cell contains the language of human life, the DNA of man. The question that arises is where did such a ‘cosmic egg’ come from?
- In Hindu tantra, based on the Hindu philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism, the Shri Yantra represents the expansion of the universe from the cosmic egg after its creation by Shiva through the power of Shakti.
If ‘cosmic egg’ was like a hen’s egg that when hatched can only bring forth a chick, not a cow or any other animal; then only one thing should have come out of the hatching of the ‘cosmic egg’, not the whole Universe. However if the ‘cosmic egg’ was a cell of living matter encoded with the DNA of the Universe, ‘the language of creation’, that began to divide and mutate then various organs of the Universe such as planets, stars, and even life would arise as the growth and mutation continued over time. The idea of the EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE is both scientific and logical for as the Universe grew, the womb or membrane that contained it would literally have to expand till fully gestated, much like a pregnant woman’s womb expands when a fetus grows inside it. During this gestation period various organs of the Universe such as planets and stars would have been formed much as limbs grow inside the womb of a pregnant woman. ‘The stretching (expansion) of the ‘heavens’ is a common expression also used in numerous OT scriptures, as for example in Isa. 45:12.
- The earliest ideas of “Egg-shaped Cosmos” come from some of the Sanskrit scriptures. The Sanskrit term for it is Brahmanda (Brahm means 'Cosmos' or 'expanding', Anda means 'Egg'). Certain Puranas such as the Brahmanda Purana speak of this in detail.
Another one of the ancient Hindu texts literally defines the ‘cosmic egg’ as ‘expanding cosmos’. Once again this is not possible with a literal egg but only if the ‘cosmic egg’ was a cell of living matter that divided and grew. The Big Bang theory is a variation of this Hindu myth that the Universe expanded from a single particle that was termed Primeval Atom instead of ‘cosmic egg’.
- The Rig Veda (RV 10.121) uses a similar name for the source of the universe: Hiranyagarbha, which literally means "golden fetus" or "golden womb". The Upanishads elaborate that the Hiranyagarbha floated around in emptiness for a while, and then broke into two halves which formed Dyaus (Heaven) and Prithvi (Earth) - concepts that existed in nearly every ancient culture, and were also articulated by the Abrahamic religions. (Genesis 1:1).
The concept of the Universe gestating in an expanding womb is not limited to one Hindu text such as the one above but is found in many texts of the Vedas, the Puranas and the Mahabharata. The womb is the equivalent of that which science terms ‘Space’ in which the heavens and the earth are to found. The concept of the expansion of Space from the beginning has been much theorized by science, and is also found in numerous Biblical scriptures such as Psalm 104:2, Isaiah 40:22, Isaiah 42:5. The breaking of the golden fetus into two halves is exactly the same process observed in cell division as the fetus grows in the womb. The formation of Heaven and Earth at the very beginning of creation is also reported in Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. It may seem strange to our natural senses that the heaven and the earth, and the heavens were created by the same process as a baby is formed in a womb but this explanation is as plausible as, or more plausible than any other that has been proposed for the creation of the Universe.
- In the Mahabharata we read: In this world, when it was destitute of brightness and light, and enveloped all around in total darkness, there came into being, as the primal cause of creation, a mighty egg, the one inexhaustible seed of all created beings.
The above text from the epic Hindu poem, The Mahabharata, highlights both the science and the contradictions found in Hindu texts. The idea that all creation originated with one inexhaustible seed is a scientifically valid idea. However there is also a contradiction in the above statement in that the mighty egg, the inexhaustible seed could not have come INTO THIS WORLD if the mighty egg was the seed of all created beings. How could the world exist before the seed came into existence from which it arose? And how did the mighty egg come into existence?
‘COSMIC EGG’ MYTHOLOGY IN SCIENCE
- The cosmic egg is an ancient concept resurrected by modern science in the 1930s and explored by theoreticians during the following two decades. The idea comes from a perceived need to reconcile Edwin Hubble's observation of an expanding universe (which is also predicted by Einstein's equations of general relativity) with the notion that the universe must be eternally old. Georges Lemaitre proposed in 1927 that the cosmos originated from what he called the primeval atom. Current cosmological models maintain that 13.7 billion years ago, the entire mass of the universe was compressed into a singularity, from which it expanded to its current state (the Big Bang), the so-called cosmic egg.
The ‘Big Bang’ or the ‘Singularity’ is in itself the ‘cosmic egg’, that which existed in the beginning and the expansion (or hatching) of which brought everything we see into existence. The ‘cosmic egg’ was given a more scientific name, the ‘Primeval Atom’ when this theory was originally proposed. Scientists have achieved a great deal of consensus that the Universe did in fact have a beginning. This however poses a great deal of philosophical and theological problems for science, for in order to get anything started, it stands to reason that there must have been someone around to get it started. A beginning implies the presence of ‘Intelligence’ (God) from before the beginning and that idea is repugnant to science even if it can be proven to be the only valid one. Here’s a quote from http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/bigbang.html: “Einstein ultimately gave grudging acceptance to what he called "the necessity for a beginning" and eventually to "the presence of a superior reasoning power." But he never did accept the reality of a personal God.”
- Here’s another quote from the ‘Big Bang’ article on Wikipedia: In 1931 Lemaître went further and suggested that the evident expansion in forward time required that the Universe contracted backwards in time, and would continue to do so until it could contract no further, bringing all the mass of the Universe into a single point, a "primeval atom", at a point in time before which time and space did not exist. The ‘Big Bang’ is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and increases the physical distance between two comoving points.
This idea of the expansion of space, of the stretching of the heavens is found in many Biblical scriptures as mentioned previously in this chapter. This concept is also found in Hindu philosophy as noted previously, as well as in other mythologies; it forms the basis of the scientific theory of the expanding universe. If the Universe expanded or grew as is proposed both by religion and science, then it stands to reason that if we go back in time we would see it contracting till it reached the beginning. The point in time at which the Universe could contract no further would bring us to that moment when all that existed, materially speaking, was the ‘cosmic egg’, the primeval atom, the inexhaustible seed and nothing else . The difference between science and religion is not in the theory but rather the source of the ‘cosmic egg’. Science has no explanation for the source of the primeval atom or the ‘Big Bang’ from which the Universe has apparently risen. Religions credit a deity or deities to be the creator(s) of the ‘cosmic egg’.
- The science of Cosmology attempts to explain the origins of the Cosmos as well as its nature. Prior to the 19th century, this subject was mainly the domain of philosophy and religion. From Wikipedia: A Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of our universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. Cosmology is unusual in physics for drawing heavily on the work of particle physicists' experiments, and research into phenomenology and even string theory; from astrophysicists; from general relativity research; and from plasma physics. Thus, cosmology unites the physics of the largest structures in the universe with the physics of the smallest structures in the universe.
That science attempts to understand the origin of the largest bodies in the Universe by studying the smallest particles does not seem so incredulous when we reflect on the fact that even the largest known animal on the planet, the blue whale, grows from a microscopic cell. Therefore the possibility that the Universe itself arose from such a single particle (primeval atom), a cosmic egg or a seed is not unscientific at all. The only question is who created the original seed and who has the near infinite language capabilities that would be necessary to encode such a seed? Language in the case of DNA encoding is almost certainly a mathematical language, like that of a computer, not a human tongue. It would almost certainly be mathematics that is not known to man. Therefore the science that can write or encode a DNA molecule is as far beyond man’s capabilities as that of a monkey writing the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Nonetheless the process is scientific and thus the creator of the Universe is a scientist whose science is simply beyond the capabilities of the human mind, for which reason man seeks desperately to understand origins without giving credit to an originator. Since man does not understand the process that could give rise to such a complex structure as the Universe, he refuses to acknowledge that there may exist an intelligence that has the required knowledge to create such a complex seed that would result in the birth and maturity of the Universe itself. By denying a superior intelligence as the source of creation, science denies its own observations and reaches conclusions that are most unscientific.
- It helps to keep in mind that scientifically speaking an ‘Egg’, and a ‘Seed’ is the same as a Cell that has encoded in its DNA the instructions, that when the Cell is fertilized will produce that which is defined by the language (the Word) of the encoded instructions. If a human being or an animal or a plant can grow from a single cell through a process that is daily observed, if not yet fully understood, why could not have the Universe have similarly arisen from a ‘Cosmic Egg’, a ‘Mighty Egg’, an ‘Inexhaustible Seed’, a single Cell? Could not a single Cell encoded with the appropriate information develop into the Universe over a required period of gestation, much as a baby develops in a womb from a single Cell. Though some may scoff at this idea, the reason for their incredulity is not such a concept is a possibility but because of the magnitude of that which they observe is so huge, infinite in scope, that they feel (despite the evidence) that it is not possible that the Universe could have grown from a single Cell, a single seed, a single egg. Yet that is exactly what science theorizes by claiming that everything has emerged from the ‘Big Bang’, a Primeval Atom, a Singularity or ‘Cosmic Egg’ that would be more scientifically accurate to define as a Cell, literally the Seed of the Universe. From Wikipedia: The cell theory, first developed in 1839 by Matthias Jakob Schleiden and Theodor Schwann, states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells, that all cells come from preexisting cells, that vital functions of an organism occur within cells, and that all cells contain the hereditary information necessary for regulating cell functions and for transmitting information to the next generation of cells.
The function of cells as encoders and decoders of LANGUAGE or INFORMATION (words) that are contained in them is apparent from the above definition. Without the information encoded on it a Cell would be as useless as a computer without an operating system. So if a self replicating and mutating Cell can be created, the only limitation on what it could bring forth would be the limitation of the language encoded on it, if the language itself was infinite, what could be brought forth would be infinite. The concept of an infinite language that can only stem from an infinite intelligence is the only valid explanation for an infinite Universe. The question that naturally arises is who is this intelligence that has the scientific capability of encoding a language on a Cell, be it that of an amoeba or that of the Universe?
As the science of Genetics develops and becomes more clearly understood, it becomes apparent that Language is the fundamental building block of all organisms. Cells therefore are carriers of information, of language; without instructions encoded on cells to define what it must become, no organism would exist. The same must be true for inorganic matter, it too must have grown from cells or particles that have the required information encoded on them to form rocks, and soil, and water and, air and, so on and so forth. The question that again arises is who is the intelligence with whom this language, the Language of Creation originated? Creation it appears has resulted from Language and words, but who is the author? Science does not tackle this question at all since science does not acknowledge the role of language in the beginning, does not acknowledge that language, and therefore intelligence, must have preceded the creation of matter even though the evidence mounts daily that language is to be found written on all matter! Since science denies the existence of an intelligent Creator who alone could have encoded the original ‘Cosmic Egg’, it dodges this vital question by not raising the question at all. To suggest that creation could have occurred without a creator is like trying to suggest that a book may have been written without an author. In the next chapter we will explore from whence came this ‘Cosmic Egg’, the primordial ‘Seed’ of the Universe?
