Our Origins From Primordial Atom
Joseph Campbell, in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, gives an
expanded version of the universe. After reading just the first 15 pages of
the 1981 National Geographic Atlas of the World he was amazed. Our
solar system is nestled within a galaxy of billions of stars. Twenty
similar galaxies, of which our galaxy is a member, are collectively called
"cluster." Our "cluster" in turn is but one of the thousands of clusters
of galaxies. All of these thousands of clusters are called superclusters
and their number is unknown. The rest of the universe is unknown and still
expanding!
As he read on the vision of a universe of unimaginable magnitude and
inconceivable violence mesmerized him: billions upon trillions of stars
(our sun being one of them) — roaring thermonuclear furnaces — blowing
themselves and forming still more stars with circling planets. Beyond the
awesome boundaries of creation are heard the murmurs, or microwaves, which
echo the greatest cataclysmic explosion of all — the Big Bang!
All these millions and billions of spinning galaxies, many as great as our
Milky Way, each containing billions of stars are moving away from each
other at prodigious speeds and with still no point anywhere! This
observation had led to Albert Einstein’s founding statement of the modern
theory of relativity: "It is impossible by any experiment whatsoever to
determine absolute rest." Any hypothetical still point may be taken in any
part of the universe as the centre. What one sees is these myriad of
galaxies streaming away from each other at such speeds and distances that
finally even our greatest telescopes will not be able to track them — the
light from them arriving so late that their present positions are out of
sight! This unending expansion has been taking place all over the universe
for billions of years since the Big Bang!
Kash is sure that it is possible to explore the entire universe in the
infinite mind. The Persian mystic Rumi, among many, also announced the
same Reality: "Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all
from yourself." Since Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi enlightened that all of
Kash’s experiences were within himself in the Sahasrara then it may
also be said that the entire creation also exist within each and
every human. The Thousand-Petal Lotus is actually an inner microcosm of
the entire outer macrocosm! All that has been created since the Big Bang
exists within us in the Sahasrara Chakra. This fact is far less
incredible than what science has discovered: that the entire universe
expanded in existence from something smaller than an atom!
The PBS documentary The Creation of the Universe traces the theory
of the Big Bang to the exact nano-second it took place using the latest
data of unmanned spacecraft, deep-space telescopes, and supercomputers. It
sums up the findings of the greatest modern scientists, quantum
physicists, astronomers and cosmologists: Stephen Hawking, Margaret
Burbridge, Murray Gell-Mann (Nobel Prize winner), Sheldon Glashow, Heinz
Pagels, Abdus Salam, Allan Sandage, Steven Weinberg (Nobel Prize winner)
and John Archibald Wheeler. The conclusion to this great scientific quest
of humankind to find its origins gives the faint hint of an incredible
origin to this creation:
"We
see evidence from every direction that the universe . . . began as a
single seed smaller than an atom — and in the very real sense you and
I were there!"
The Creation of the Universe
Modern physicists and cosmologists are just beginning to scratch the
surface of Creation. As they and their machines regress back into space
and time to search for the origins of this universe, an incomprehensible
Reality is beginning to confound them: How can the universe be created
from something smaller than an atom? What infinite, awesome Power of
creation could bring forth an entire universe from that microscopic seed?
The
National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe (Roy A. Galant p.
221) states that about 12 to 20 billion years ago astronomers think that a
"primordial atom" exploded with a big bang and the entire Universe flew
out at incredible speeds. Eventually matter cooled and condensed into
galaxies and stars.
To understand this fantastic fact we need to be enlightened by the
simplified but lucid narrative skills of Alan Lightman, senior lecturer at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his book Ancient Light
he deals with cosmology, a science that has undergone a revolution for the
last fifteen years as subatomic physics have allowed scientists to explore
the billionth part of a second that gave birth to this universe.
". . . the universe began in a sort of explosion, starting
from infinite density and temperature, and has been
expanding, thinning out and cooling ever since. The
beginning was not like an ordinary explosion, in which
debris flies out into a surrounding region of nonmoving
space. Instead the big bang explosion began everywhere.
There was no surrounding space for the universe to move
into, since any such space would be part of the universe.
The concept boggles the imagination . . .
. . . the universe was about 10-8 seconds old
when its material was as a temperature of 1014
degrees. Any further extrapolation back in time toward the
big bang, towards higher temperatures, enters the realm of
speculation. Yet cosmologists have been forced to speculate.
Many of the properties of the universe may have been
determined in the first 10-8 seconds and much
earlier. If the grand unified theories are correct, then
their most interesting effects would have happened when the
universe was about 10-35 seconds old. . . .
The essential feature of the inflationary universe model is that, shortly
after the big bang, the infant universe went through a brief and extremely
rapid expansion, after which it returned to the more leisurely rate of
expansion of the standard big bang model. By the time the universe was a
tiny fraction (perhaps 10-32)
of a second, the period of rapid expansion, or inflation, was over . . .
The epoch of rapid expansion could have taken a patch of space so tiny
that it had already homogenized and quickly stretched it to a size larger
than today’s entire observable universe . . . For the purpose of
illustration, we will assume that the inflationary epoch began when the
universe was 10-35 seconds old and ended when it was 10-32
seconds old. At the beginning of the inflationary epoch, the largest
region of space that could have homogenized would have been about 10-35
light seconds in size, or about 10-25 centimeters, much smaller
than the nucleus of an atom. At the end of the inflationary epoch, this
tiny homogenized region would have been stretched to something like 10400
light years. . .
Numerically the Planck density is about 1093 grams per cubic
centimeter. The infant universe had this enormous density when it was
about 10-43 seconds old."
Allan Lightman, Ancient Light
(Allan Lightman, Ancient Light, Harvard University
Press,1991, p. 33-154.)
The universe began as an explosion from an infinite density and
temperature; expanding, thinning and cooling since. It was an
extra-extraordinary explosion. Unlike normal blasts, where debris fly into
the surrounding nonmoving space, this was totally different. In fact it’s
conception staggers the imagination: there was no surrounding space for it
to move into as all the universe was compressed into the subatomic sized
origin — all existing space being part of it. Nothing existed before the
Big Bang!
The universe was only about .000000001 seconds old when its material
temperature was 100,000,000,000,000 degrees. Most of the properties of
this universe was determined during this period and earlier still. Any
attempt to go back into time would entail speculation. However, if the
grand unified theories are correct then their most fascinating effects
would have taken place when the universe was
0.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds old!
The essence of the inflationary universe model is that, immediately after
the big bang, the newly born universe underwent a very brief and extremely
rapid expansion, before slowing down to the pace of the standard big bang
model. By the time the universe was about .000,000,000, 000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,001 seconds old, expansion was over. Within this extremely
short period it had already expanded and stretched from an infinitesimal
small pinpoint to a size much larger than today’s observable universe.
To illuminate this fact we will assume that the expansion began when the
universe was exactly .000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000, 000,000,000,001
seconds old, and ended when it was only .000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds old. At the beginning of
expansion the largest area was about .000,000,000, 000,000,000,
000,000,01 centimeters, a size far smaller than the nucleus of an atom.
Within that nano-second it had expanded to something like
10000000000,0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000,
0000000000,0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000,0000000000,
0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000,
0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,
0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,
0000000000,0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000,0000000000,
0000000000,000000000, 000000000,0000000000,0000000000,
0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000,
0000000000 light years in size!
And one light year covers about 6,000,000,000,000 miles! And this is just
a fraction of the area that the most advanced telescopes can detect from
the ancient light still coming from the initial Big Bang. The universe is
infinitely larger than is visible. In fact humans will never know the
actual size of the universe as it is still expanding 15,000,000,000, 000
years later!
The Planck density, a measure of weight, is about 10000000000,
0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,
0000000000,0000000000 kilos per cubic centimeter. Our universe had this
enormous density when it was precisely .0000000000,
0000000000,0000000000,0000 000 000,0001 seconds old! It should be noted
that the maximum size of the universe at this time was
.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,01 centimeters. This tiny fraction of an
atom was already weighing countless billions of trillions of quadrillions
of quintillions of tons!
It takes a while for the sheer enormousness of this astounding Truth to
sink in. It defies logic and eludes comprehension. The more the mind
ponders the less it comprehends. The brilliant scientists, whom the
civilized world cherished for their hair-splitting, or we could say,
atom-splitting accuracy, have hit a colossal cosmic Reality. They have now
to prove how did the tiniest of particles produce a universe whose
vastness is now found to be beyond comprehension. The ubiquitous questions
of this century: How, why and what was that primeval atom that formed an
entire universe within a split second? The question of the next
millennium: "Who made this awesome atom?"
The more the human mind visualizes this brain-boggling nature and awesome
grandeur of creation the more humble it will become. There will never be
any scientific explanation to the origin of the universe and if there is
going to any at all, it will be preposterous, to say the least. Science’s
finest atheist minds are already beginning to whisper ever so softly that
there is something else — The Almighty Creator!
Others are beginning to believe that humanity’s quest for Truth through
science is over. John Horgan, a 43-year-old senior writer with
Scientific American magazine is one of them. His book The End of
Science caused a commotion among scientists for its essence that "pure
science, the quest for knowledge about what we are and where we came from,
has already entered an area of diminishing returns."
For those who have depended on science to disprove the myths of the
scriptures it is time to turn back at these very early stages of admission
that science cannot enlighten anymore. It has reached its natural limits.
Now only the Spirit can take Homo sapiens beyond — far, far beyond
— the limitations of their minds. And it has begun to do so!
Humans have done enormous damage to Nature in this blind pursuit of
materialism. Science bears a larger responsibility in trying to establish
the superiority and dominance of humans over all Nature, and placed a
premium on mastering matter. This scientific search began when Copernicus
peered through his telescope and found that the Earth was not the center
of the universe, in stark contrast to the holy, perfect symmetry that the
Church had, in its ignorance, infallibly asserted. Ever since then there
has been a relentless rape of the divine origin of creation and Western
civilization has been wandering in the maze of mathematics and matter.
The cold, calculating nature of science (not scientists) lacks the human
qualities of love, compassion, tenderness, and emotion. Science is all
mental, mathematical, material, logic and tangibility. Science cannot
detect Spirit, vibrations, chakras, consciousness, thoughtless awareness,
the Kingdom of God and other spiritual facts. All the laws of matter,
physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics are devoid of divinity and
lead humankind further and further from the Absolute Truth. For decades
they have stripped away the masks of this mysterious universe, expecting
to find the mathematical mantra that would have etched their names in
atheist eternity. Instead they have hit a colossal celestial Truth. Some
of the greatest scientific minds on Earth are now beginning to hint that
the answer to the origin of the universe will never ever be found or
proven by their grandest theories. They are also admitting that there has
to be a Creator!
Humans have probed and peered far enough into the universe. For millennia
they have projected all their senses outwards and yet found no answer to
the fundamental mysteries of life. Isn’t it time to separate scientific
facts from spiritual Reality, and try a new approach by seeking from
within? Scriptures and the law of averages point to that direction.
The search for the origin of the universe has ended for science: the Truth
lies elsewhere. As more and more theories flounder and crash in their
quest to prove an atheist origin, the Ultimate Truth of the Almighty
Creator will slowly but surely be recognized. Even Stephen Hawkings,
probably the most eminent theoretical physicist in the world today, while
recalling his childhood fantasy on why the universe came into being, could
only say, "But I still do not understand why."
