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Time cannot be outwardly intuited, anymore than space can be intuited as something “in” us. What, then, are space and time? Are they real existences?
— Immanuel Kant
Creation and the Origin of Space and Time Copyright 2002 by P.T. Mistlberger, All Rights Reserved. ****************************
Why or how did the ego arise in the first place?
Why the ego arises, and how it was created, is a mystery that every spiritual tradition and religion has attempted to explain in their own way. However, all explanations are limited as they are attempts to express something through the mind that cannot be understood with the mind.
What we do know, however, is that there was an apparent beginning to the dream of the ego, and for each of us--as apparently separate beings locating ourselves in separate bodies--the idea of “beginning” has profound personal significance as well. It speaks to the distant reaches of our memory, of our physical births, and of our early childhoods.
From the spiritual viewpoint, however, the ultimate beginning speaks to the Creation of the universe, what religions have described in their Creation myths, and what science has (currently) defined as the Big Bang, the primal massive explosion that birthed the universe billions of years ago.
For both religion and science, this Point of Origin is very real, a definable and measurable beginning to all things. Religion and science are pointing to the same thing, if using different languages. Both are defining a genesis event, an apparent beginning. Scientific cosmology may not be concerned with consciousness per se, or religion with the physical characteristics of the universe, but both are concerned with the origin and unfolding of the universe.
Science speaks of the unfolding of dimensions immediately following the Big Bang, and religion speaks of the creation of the heavens and the earth, or of the various worlds fashioned by the Creator deity. As such, religion and science are again referring to the same thing--a primal event that preceded both time and space.
Space and time are the field of limitations through which the ego undergoes its experience of reality, which is essentially a kind of dreaming. This dreaming is concerned completely with the external world. It requires an external universe--from sub-atomic particles to galaxies--and a body of some sort in which to experience this universe. The process of consciousness associating with a body of some sort--identification--is the process that becomes the foundation of the ego, the isolated, separate “I.”
Where do we come from? How does non-dual enlightenment view the origin of the universe and humanity?
Let’s have some fun here. Let’s say that (according to the current scientific paradigm) the “Big Bang,” the creation of the universe, occurred fifteen billion years ago in time as we measure it. Let’s further assume that human beings “appeared,” whether created ex nihilo (something from nothing) or evolved, about five million years ago. Let’s also assume for a moment that these current scientific time estimates are reasonably accurate.
A little basic arithmetic then tells us that humanity is only about 1/3000th as old as the known universe. Just a tiny fraction of the age of what is around us. The equivalent of this is if the age of the universe was measured on a 24 hour clock, beginning at 12am, then humanity shows up about thirty seconds before midnight at the end of the entire day.
What do you suppose has been going on for the previous 23 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds? Probably quite a bit. The Biblical book of Genesis referring to Man being created on the sixth of seven days seems to be a good metaphor for the sequence of the development of life. Earthly human life is apparently a late bloomer in the cosmic scheme of things.
Astronomers currently estimate that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe. Each galaxy is an “island-universe” with millions or billions of individual suns, much like the Milky Way galaxy that our sun is part of. But what about those other billions of galaxies? Do they have life in them or are they just a display of pretty lights put up there for our enjoyment?
If we make a safe bet and assume that there are plenty of intelligent civilizations in the universe, then it is a short leap to suppose that many must have developed before us, given that we know that the known universe is so much older than the human race.
Many of what we might call extraterrestrial races from other worlds must have developed to high levels of intellectual and technical attainment. It is entirely reasonable to assume that many of them have developed the capacity to engineer life forms on their own, or to modify existing organic templates, or even to exercise genetic interventions (something humanity has already begun to do, via cloning). If their technical sophistication was matched by moral and spiritual excellence, then we have the makings of a quasi-divine race--or at least, one appearing so from our vantage point.
Thus, the human race itself may very well be the product of such genetic alteration at some key juncture in the past. The “gods” of ancient legends and religious scriptures may well be echoes of the memories of such master engineers or custodians. But although this addresses some of the issues of human evolution (and some of the difficulties that remain in fully linking early humans with apes), it does not satisfy the theological concerns. Such as, from where, and how, did the quasi-divine races themselves develop?
Ultimately we are led back to a common Origin Point for all. But neither science or religion have satisfactorily answered the conundrum of what came before this Origin Point. What was before the Big Bang? And if there was no beginning to God, then why, after existing for eternity, did God suddenly create the universe?
The problem is a logical absurdity. It defies reason.
Both science and religion have attempted to get around the issue--science by theorizing that both time and space “unfolded” in the massive primordial explosion of the Big Bang. In other words, prior to the Big Bang, there was no space, and no time, so the idea of what was “before” is rendered meaningless.
Religion deals with it by the ex nihilo, or “something from nothing” premise, which basically is a way of declaring that God’s mind is unknowable by our limited reason. We simply can’t figure it out, so should resort to trust or faith and not concern ourselves with the matter.
The Wisdom of Unknowing
But can we ever truly know the answer?
Not by the usual intellectual processes. Our brains exist in the physical universe which is based on cause and effect, and the progression of events and growth through time. Our thinking mind is an agent of our physical brain, and as such, cannot really grasp eternity, no-time, or infinity and no-space. These notions are purely abstractions that the mind on the surface can accept but in no way understands.
However, a simple thought-experiment can point our consciousness toward this unknowable Origin of everything. We have only to focus our minds on what lies outside of the universe, or what came before Creation. If we stay focused on these paradoxes, eventually our deductive, linear reasoning process falls quiet, as it realizes that it simply can’t get out of the box of its conditioning to understand things in terms of spatial dimension—height, width, and depth—and linear time—beginning, middle and end. According to our minds, everything must have a position within the known boundaries of the universe, and everything must have a start point and a finish point in time.
At the moment of mental quietude when our frustrated reasoning abandons these seemingly unsolvable problems and falls still, there is the possibility that something can happen. This “something” is what mystics have tried to express for thousands of years. In the East, in particular, they have made a prolonged study of this peak experience, and have known it by many names. The anonymous Christian mystic who wrote the classic book called The Cloud of Unknowing was speaking from this expanded awareness that transcends reason, when he titled his book. It is truly the limited boundaries of reasoning that veils us from the understanding of what lies beyond our accepted notions of time and space.
These intellectual boundaries are where many pure rationalists have gotten snared, ending up disdainfully dismissing religious Creationism because of its more absurd and childish scenarios—and in so doing, missing the very valid point that intellect alone cannot solve these ultimate problems. These same intellectual boundaries have also entangled many Creationists, who have ended up rejecting and condemning scientific ideas, because such ideas do not align with their literal interpretations of religious scriptures. This kind of religious literalism is again a misuse of, and over-identification with, the intellectual function of the mind.
So, when Creationists and Evolutionists reject each other’s views wholesale, they are both doing the same thing—getting caught in the limitations of the mind. Seeing beyond the mind, by learning to disidentify with thinking, is to understand the timelessness and limitlessness of the Bigger View.
Non-Duality and the Bigger View
What is this Bigger View? How does it understand the problem of how the universe began? Please tell me, I’m all ears.
As the intellect is, it cannot understand. As you are—you identified with intellect—you cannot understand.
The key to this problem lies in a change of state on behalf of the subject itself, the one who is trying to understand the problem--you. The object--in this case, the problem of the origin of the universe--cannot be understood as long as it remains separate from the subject (you) who is trying to figure the problem out.
Are you suggesting I have to die in order to know the answer? That sounds like religion.
Your body doesn’t have to die. But your identification with thinking has to “die,” even if only momentarily, in order to directly know what eternity and infinity actually are.
What are they?
They are not just ideas! That’s the whole point. The concepts of “infinity” and “eternity” are the mind’s attempt to produce a photocopy of ultimate reality.
When you investigate the nature of your apparent ego-identity, you will gradually begin to see into its basic emptiness—its fabricated nature. As this awareness deepens, so too does the basic understanding that this “emptiness” is also an indescribable vastness.
Once we attune our awareness to this empty-vastness—which is nothing other than consciousness itself—it becomes possible to locate this same essential empty-vastness within all apparent bodies or objects in space and time. It becomes, in a sense, a process of “folding” space and time. Put another way, in seeing your own true nature, you begin to see this true nature wherever you look as well.
Typical thought, as we normally experience it, is the “fastest” thing in the universe—much faster than the speed of light, which we have already measured. We can, in a sense, “travel” anywhere in the universe practically instantaneously just by thinking about it via imagination. However, the original matrix of all thought—consciousness itself—is even faster than thought. It is, strictly speaking, beyond all speed as it is already beyond all space. It is everywhere. It is ultimately understood to be the one fundamental essence of Reality itself. Or, as the Advaita masters put it, “Only Consciousness Is.”
Thus, via realizing our essential nature as consciousness, we simultaneously go beyond all space. As time is but the measurement of the relative movements of objects in space, we simultaneously go beyond time as well.
And when do we get the answer as to how or when the universe was created?
The realization of our true nature as pure consciousness is the answer. It is also the dissolution of the question in the fire of pure Self-inquiry.
I don’t get it.
To recognize your true nature as consciousness is to locate yourself as prior to all thinking, all identification, all projection—and prior to all space and time, as these latter two are functions of separation. Consciousness does not recognize separation. It knows itself as the sole unqualified Reality, absolutely indivisible and whole, as well as unborn and undying.
By locating itself as prior to space and time, consciousness is revealed to be the Source that is also prior to Creation—whether this Creation is understood as God’s Creation, or the Big Bang of science.
This direct knowing of our true nature as consciousness prior to all creation, is the same thing as pure love. This is the basis of the understanding that to love God is to know God, or to know God is to love God. This extends all the way down to the simplest levels. To truly and empathically know someone is to love them in the ultimate sense—by directly knowing yourself as not separate from them.
I think I see what you’re getting at. Then what is the Creation, or the Big Bang?
From the perspective of non-dual enlightenment, it’s seen that the Creation or the Big Bang is going on all the time! The Creation--the birth of separation resulting in the origins of the ego--is actually happening every moment. Each moment you are effectively choosing to stay separate from your Natural State, and thus each moment the Big Bang (the origin of separation) is being reenacted within your own psyche. It is the ultimate symbol for the process of the ego as it creates its own reality—microcosmically in one human being, macrocosmically as the entire universe of galaxies, stars, planets, life forms, elements, and so forth. The whole universe perceivable through the senses of the body is an extension of the ego-mind.
Does that make it all a colossal mistake?
Depends how you view it. It only seems to be a mistake if we believe in the reality of the need for a supposed “correction” in the first place. Non-dual enlightenment is the direct realization that the so-called error—the very apparent messiness of this universe of separation—is itself an illusion, deriving from a faulty perception. What most people think they are—an isolated ego-identity—is finally seen to be based on a profound misunderstanding. Likewise, what we typically see as the world and the universe is not actually there. What is there is something much simpler, much greater, completely harmonious, and much more intimate—precisely because it’s our actual very nature. It’s us as we really are—simply pure consciousness itself.
So from the point of view of the ego-mind, the universe, and life, are deeply flawed. From the point of view of consciousness, our Natural State, everything is exactly the way it should be. So the shift we’re considering is ultimately one of understanding and perception.
Life After Death and Higher Dimensions
What about life after death? Other dimensions? Are these other dimensions more real than the one we are in?
Generally speaking, so-called higher dimensions are more plastic and subtle in form, and less tightly structured. But from the standpoint of non-dualism even these higher dimensions are not more real. Their conditions may more closely approximate pure Being and pure consciousness itself, but it is still an approximation. Any kind of dimension implies some degree of separation. “Heaven” is, in the end, not a place located anywhere. It is the Natural State, pure Being and pure consciousness itself.
Realization of non-dual consciousness yields direct insight into the illusory nature of physical death as an apparent end of life, and more understanding of the true function of physical death as a portal from this to more subtle dimensions—and thus of a deeper understanding of what life actually is. Physical life is only one small manifestation of true life. True life is all an expression of the One Source of pure Being and pure consciousness. It is not found within physical life. It’s the other way around—physical life exists within the greater life of pure Being that is beyond all space and time, unlimited, without beginning or end.
What happens to us after our body dies?
To fully understand the answer to that question is difficult from the point of view of your current body-mind in this dimension. The physical brain of this third dimension is conditioned to perceive and think in a specific way. After the transition of physical death, the laws and parameters and means of perception and cognition change. You’re not just entering into new territory, but the very apparatus by which you are perceiving and understanding this new territory is changing as well. Not just the landscape is changing, you are also.
The interrelationship between consciousness and Reality is more apparent in the dimensions beyond this one. The veil between our actual nature as radiant consciousness, and the actual radiance of Reality, is thinner, and thus light itself plays a more central role. In the after death state, there is the opportunity to recognize that this light that is everywhere is in fact a reflection of our own Natural State. The Tibetan Book of the Dead makes reference to this in its descriptions of the process of the transition to the Other Side wherein there is the repeated opportunity to recognize the “Clear Light” of Reality as being the very source and nature of our true identity. Failure to recognize this Clear Light as being one’s own actual nature is brought about due to fear—quite literally, fear of oneself. This fear is the fundamental self-contraction of the ego, the shying away from the basic vastness and supreme freedom of our true nature as pure consciousness.
When there is fear of our true nature, the natural tendency is to seek for relief by identifying with a more limited, conditional state of being, which in turn leads to the pull to associate with another physical body in space and time. This is the operating impulse behind the pull to reincarnate again and again.
However, the entire process of reincarnation is occurring within the dream-world of the ego-mind. With subsequent incarnations the grosser aspects of the ego fall away and there is less and less identification with physical reality, and a stronger pull to pure Spirit. Eventually, there is identification with consciousness itself, at which point only the subtler aspects of ego remain. These subtler aspects can prevail for a very long time within the realms of conditional reality in space and time, over many, many incarnations. But eventually they too fall away and there is then the deepening understanding that the entire progressive movement through space and time, over many incarnations in physical forms, occurred in the trance-state of identification with physical form, that is, did not actually occur from the standpoint of ultimate reality. This marks the full shift from time to timelessness, from space to no-space, from mind to consciousness, from limitation to freedom.
From another angle, the question “what comes after death” is ultimately based on the assumption that the future is actually real. The future is truly an abstraction, a concept, and as such is dissociated from Reality. Reality is the present moment, in which is located that immensity that we call eternity or infinity. First find your true nature in the present moment. Then see how much you still care about what happens after the physical body expires.
I seem to have a strong fear of death. Where does that come from?
Preoccupation with death is often related to absence of love, contraction of the spiritual heart. The ego-mind fears the unknown, and death is the ultimate unknown. Our sciences have not penetrated or even really detected the next dimension beyond this one. Reports about the “other side” from those who have “crossed over” and “come back to life” are often sketchy in most cases and don’t always agree with each other. From the standpoint of the mind, we simply don’t truthfully know what happens after the demise of the body. But from the standpoint of non-dual enlightenment, the answer becomes clear. The answer is love. As we awaken to the Natural State, our heart softens and qualities like gentleness and compassion emerge more. As we attune ourselves to the unconditional love of our true nature, fear gradually subsides and evaporates, like morning dew in the rising sun. As fear diminishes, so does preoccupation with death. Eventually, the vastness of consciousness, and its nature as eternity and infinity, literally conquers death by seeing its illusory nature. It sees through the apparent “end” of death and sees it as a page turning to another chapter in the endless book of life. It even welcomes death as an adventure.
Love conquers all.
Truly, it does. True love slays time, and in doing so, slays death. True love is the recognition that consciousness, pure Being, is indestructible and the sole, actual Reality. All else is but a passing dream.
Do great enlightened beings dwell forever in higher dimensions beyond our ken?
The radiant Natural State of pure consciousness that is the essence of all “great Enlightened beings” does not recognize dimension or space any more than time. Yet, consciousness can itself be endlessly modified and experience endless kinds of limitations as part of the grand experiment of existence. The wise old friends of humanity, the sages and masters, are one and the same as our own true Heart and nature. They play in form throughout the worlds of form, much as we all do, and fully participate in the play of universal life. But the only way we can truly recognize them is if we ourselves prioritize awakening and enter into our own Natural State. This condition is always available, and is always here, not only in some higher dimension, just as it is always now, not only in some “after-death” world.
Modern Physics and Enlightenment
I’ve read Capra’s The Tao of Physics and found the parallels between modern physics and some of the Eastern spiritual traditions to be fascinating. How is this understood from the vantage point of non-dual enlightenment?
The essential aspect of Western science, as deriving largely from Aristotle, is pure dualism, where the split between the observing subject (mind) and the object (form) being studied, is carried to the point where all awareness of the subject is lost in the process of study of the object. The upshot is the acquisition of detailed knowledge of the object, which is the basis from which modern science and eventually technology has grown. The side effect of this approach has been ignorance of the effect on the subject (the person) in interacting with the object. In other words, the connection with pure consciousness tends to get obscured in the development of intellect, to the ultimate point where the importance of matter (and the material) becomes over-accentuated and even glorified at the expense of spiritual awareness.
Quantum physics principles developed in the early part of the twentieth century began a gradual reversal of this tendency to over-objectify the world around us, where the role of the observer suddenly acquired importance and even meaning. Modern cosmological theories continue the trend, which was initiated by Einstein, toward a Unified Field Theory, an attempt to describe how everything works together leading to the understanding of how the Whole is summarily greater than any parts. Awareness of the Whole becomes relevant on practical levels when we consider such matters as global warming, environmental damage wrought by industry, political instability, and so forth. Clearly, global awareness is essential to the evolution of civilization, all the more so when technology is advanced and we have the power to destroy ourselves en masse.
My own take is that the pursuit of scientific understanding of the mechanics of the physical universe should not be confused with the pursuit of seekers of spiritual enlightenment, as the former seeks to understand reality with the mind, and the latter seeks to experientially know reality and one’s true nature as not separate from it. Thus, although modern scientific theories aspire to define the entire universe in a set of conceptual principles and equations, the basis remains fundamentally abstract, and does not address the transformation of the one observing, the scientist himself. This is not to suggest that many scientists were not spiritual seekers. Many in fact were and are. But their work in science, and their spiritual realizations, perhaps should not be casually lumped together. This point is important, because there has been something of a trend in the last couple of decades to cross reference modern physics with mysticism. While there are definite parallels, there are also definite distinctions, foremost being the primary difference between what both seek—the one being intellectual understanding, the other being conscious awareness of one’s ultimate identity.
The Meaning of Creation
I get confused over one point. Is this universe a creation of the ego, or of consciousness? Following on that, is this universe an illusion, or the divine arena of life that is absolutely necessary for the awakening of the soul?
An excellent question. The answer is important to grasp, in terms of fully understanding the meaning of non-dual enlightenment. Both are true—the universe is both a creation of God (consciousness), and of the ego (separate identity). Which one it is perceived as having been created by depends on how awake we are to our true, non-dual nature.
The typical universe we perceive via the ego-mind is nothing but an extension of the ego-mind, a massive projection that we are sustaining every moment that we operate through the dream-world of identification with thinking. We think we know what we’re seeing, but in truth we don’t. What we think we’re perceiving is not actually there.
Is anything truly there at all?
Yes, but not as we typically know it to be. What is there is nothing but the actual radiance of Spirit-Force, manifesting in a play of energy. This “play” is a magnificent display, but in its deepest essence, is nothing but consciousness itself. Its apparent physical, spatial, and temporal characteristics are ultimately illusions, not existing the way we think them to be.
So it all comes back to us—the perceiver?
As it always must. This is because only consciousness is Real, in the end. When we forget our true nature, and fall asleep into the long dream of the ego, through endless incarnations within the universe of space and time, what we experience as the universe is no longer the truth of what it actually is. We experience the universe we think we know—galaxies, planets, life, other dimensions, and so on.
To know our true nature, the Natural State, is also to know the true nature of the apparent universe—the Natural Form. In truth, they are one and the same. The Natural State—you as pure awareness—is not separate or different from the universe as it really is—the Natural Form. This is the ultimate meaning of Creation.
Let me simplify this. I’m standing outside admiring a sunset. Suddenly, my internal shift occurs, and I cease identification with thinking. I cross over into my Natural State. Enlightenment has happened. Does the beautiful sunset then disappear? Does the sun disappear?
No. The only thing that disappears is your projected idea of what the sun, or the sunset, is. What is left is an unspeakable immensity that is simultaneously recognized as your own actual, true nature. The separate world disappears. What is left over is only consciousness, and its basic qualities such as love, peace, and harmony. But that which you previously conceptualized as “the sunset” remains in all its beauty for your physical eyes to gaze upon, a sunset free of mental projection and revealing its true face--even if only for one split second in eternity.
Suggested exercise: Think of the entire universe. Then try to imagine what lies “outside” of this universe. Take note of the point at which the mind registers a blank while trying to process this question. In that moment, directly recognize the limitations of intellect. Alternatively, ask yourself what happened before the “creation” of the universe--when there was “nothing.” Note again the mind struggling with such a seemingly insoluble question. In that very mental struggle, note how the same consciousness is present as when you solve a simple problem like 2+2=4. Note how consciousness does not figure things out, it just reflects what already IS, each moment. Note how thought is purely abstract and cannot wrap itself around the notion of timeless or spacelessness or pure emptiness.
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