'Creation'

Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Understanding the Lord as the Maker and the Material of the Universe

The Lord is the cause for whatever is here, known or unknown. When I look at the world,
I find a scheme of things enjoying a certain order. Whenever there is an assembly, made
up of a number of components put together intelligently, serving a certain purpose, we
call that assembly a creation. When things are not put together chaotically - like one’s
throwing things in a garbage can - but put together in a meaningful way, such that all
things become total, that single total entity is called a creation. The chair on which you
are sitting is a creation. A chair is an assembly, consisting of a number of components put
together meaningfully and serving a certain purpose and therefore it is a creation.
Similarly, a car is an intelligent assembly; it consists of a number of components such as
an engine, radiator, tires, gears and so on. A heap of these components would not make a
car. When they are intelligently assembled such that the engine is where it should be and
the wheels are where they should be, what should be moving moves and what should be
stationery is so, there you have an assembly to serve the purpose that it is designed for.
Thus a car is a creation. A clock is a creation. Your shirt is a creation. A nucleus is a
creation. A solar system is a creation. All the laws of nature are creation. This physical
body is a creation, a marvelous creation. Look at any part of the body and you will be
convinced of this fact. These arms have the right number of joints; otherwise they would
not perform the functions they are performing. Eyes, ears, heart, legs-these are not
ordinary designs. Look at the function of the heart. It is a simple pump that continuously
performs its function for a number of years. It takes a great deal of engineering and a
great deal of money to make an artificial heart. Thus, the more we think the more we see
the meaningful order in the creation. I find that everything is a marvel when I look into it.
Every cell is a marvel. Even man-made things such as rockets, computers, etc. are
marvels and I have been given an intellect to discover and enjoy the marvels.

The Creator Must be Omniscient and Omnipotent

Thus, this world is an intelligent assembly serving a definite purpose and therefore it is a
creation. It is an intelligent creation, which implies knowledge: the maker of a given
thing must have the knowledge of the thing. Whether it is a pot or a cloth or a loaf of
bread, you must know all about it before you can make it. Whether it turns out to be the
way you wanted it depends upon your experience, skill, resources etc., but you must
necessarily know about it before you start making it. The logic is that the creator of a
given thing has the knowledge of that thing. The creator of a pot has the knowledge of the
pot. When we extend this logic to the creation of the universe, it can be said that the
creator of everything must have knowledge of everything. He must be omniscient. Over
and above the knowledge, the creator must also have the skill and energy to create. So,
the creator of the universe must have all the power and skill to create everything. In other
words, the creator must be omnipotent. Once we accept that there is a creator for this
universe, then it follows that the creator must be omniscient and omnipotent. And the
knowledge and skill always rests in a conscious being and so the creator of the universe
must be a conscious being who must be omniscient and omnipotent.

Where is God?

Now a question naturally arises with respect to the creator. Where is this creator? It is
quite clear that the creator is not here nor anywhere around and therefore we assign him a
place that is beyond our reach, beyond the reach of our eyes, ears and thoughts. We call
that place the heaven, where our sense perception, our inference, our presumptions have
no access. Some people call it Vaikuntha, some call it kailasa. Let us call it heaven. And
where is it? Up there. That is why people look up, throw their arms up and pray to God.
No one looks down while addressing God. Now, if God in heaven created this world,
who created Heaven? We have to say God. Since heaven is also a part of creation it could
not have been there before creation, so the next question is: Where was God before the
creation of heaven? The question remains unanswered and that is part of one’s problem
because one is as good as one’s understanding. If not at home with their understanding,
how is one going to be at home with oneself? How is one going to accept oneself?

The Maker and the Material are One

The question as to where God is does not get answered unless we look at the whole thing
as the Vedas do. When we inquire into the creation and its cause we should not confine
ourselves to a part, but should look at the whole. We cannot get the right answers if we
ask the wrong questions, because the answer is always in keeping with the question and
so, if we ask the right question, there will be a right answer. When we inquire into the
nature of the cause for creation, we find there must be two causes for any creation: the
maker and the material. The maker, the one who is responsible for creation, is called the
efficient cause or nimmita-karana. And there also must be some material out of which
any given thing can be created. For creation of a pot for example, such as clay or copper
or brass, out of which the pot is made. For baking bread, there must be a baker and also
the flour out of which the bread can be baked.

With reference to the creation of the universe if the Lord is the maker, the efficient cause,
the question is: What is the material out of which God created this world? When we are
inquiring into the nature of the cause of the creation, we must take into account the
material also. Where did the Lord find the material? Here, we must also bear in mind that
both space and time are part of the creation and so, before creation, there is nothing
outside the creation because ‘outside’ is a concept in space which is not yet created.
Therefore, there is nothing outside the Lord before creation and so the material should
also be within the Lord. That is why he is called the Lord. Therefore not only is the Lord
the maker, but He is the material too. Tasmad va etasmat atmana akasha sambhutah
(Taittiriya Upanishad 2.1.1) - from the Lord that is this self, akasa the space was born.
From the space was born air, from air was born fire; from fire, water; from water, earth
was born. Vedas give us this model of the five elements for the creation of the world. The
world is nothing but these five elements and their combinations.

While explaining how the maker and the material of this universe are one, the Vedas give
us the illustration of a spider. yathornanabhih srhate grnhate ca (Mundaka Upanishad
1.1.7) just as a spider creates a (web) and withdraws it too. The spider is the efficient
cause of the web because it has the intelligence and the skill to create the web. It chooses
the right place for the web where it would not be swept away by the lady of the house and
where it can get its prey. This shows the spider has intelligence. And the material for the
web is the secretion of a gland which it finds within itself. So too, the Lord projects this
creation and withdraws it unto Himself at the time of dissolution. It is like your own
dream. In the dream, you are the maker of the dream world, and you are also the material
cause for the dream manifestation. Therefore we only use ‘creation’ in the sense of the
knowledge that is involved, the vision that is involved. In that sense we can say the
universe is a creation. But from the stand-point of the material cause, the universe, which
consists of both known and unknown, is a manifestation of the Lord. In the dream you are
the maker of the dream world. You are a knowledgeable person endowed with the
capacity (sakti) to make that dream world. And being not separate from the material that
is necessary for the dream world, you pervade the entire dream world. The dream space is
you, because the effect is always sustained by the material.

Your shirt, for instance, is sustained by the fabric; it cannot be independent of the fabric.
You cannot even imagine a shirt minus some fabric. That is an astounding fact. This is
true with reference to any one thing. You can’t think of a building without thinking of the
materials that have gone into it. When you see this kind of a situation, one thing becomes
clear - no object can be independent of the material of which it is made. Even though the
object is named differently from the material - shirt and cotton - spelled differently, and
understood differently, at the same time, the two objects referred to by two different
words really refer to one substance alone: cotton. We can go further and say that cotton is
but fibers, the fibers are molecules, molecules are atoms, atoms are particles and so on.
Everything is sustained by something else. At the particle level it becomes a concept.

Therefore we see that an effect is not separate from its material cause. In understanding
the Lord we use the dream example to assimilate the fact that the Lord is not separate
from all there is. In the dream, the world is sustained by me; I am the cause for the dream
world, dream space, dream time, and so on. I pervade every one of them. It is only
because I am the material cause that I pervade the dream world, otherwise I’ll be like the
pot-maker who is elsewhere. When you buy a pot and bring it home the pot-maker does
not come home with you, because he has not made the pot out of himself; the material is
separate from him. When you bring the pot you can’t leave the material, whereas you can
leave the maker behind. Between the maker and the material there is a separation. When
we are talking of the total, however, there is no separation. The material cause being
yourself in the dream, you pervade the whole world there. Space, time, stars, etc have
come out of you. If that is understood, the Lord can be understood as the one who is
manifest here in the form of space, time and everything that is empirically experienced by
you. This empirical reality means ‘this is a chair’, ‘this is a microphone’, etc for all of us.
This entire universe, which is empirically real, is a manifestation of the Lord.

Lord is to be Understood, not Believed

The lord is not a matter for belief. He is a matter for understanding. This world is not a
matter for belief because you perceive it. Therefore the Lord is also not something to be
believed, it is a challenge to understand him. If the Lord is in heaven, not within the range
of your perception or inference, then he becomes a matter of belief. In that case you
simply accept what you are told without asking questions. We are objective when we are
alive to the reality. We are talking about what is and so there is no question of belief. We
can see that gold is different from copper and that (copper) is different from lead because
each metal has its own atomic weight, its own physical and other properties. But a
physicist knows that all of them are nothing but energy, quanta of energy. That is not a
belief. If someone says, ‘I don’t see that’, then that person may have to believe, but that is
not a belief that one has to live with and die with. What we have here is belief pending
discovery. There is something to be understood. We understand the difference and at the
same time understand the non-difference; something more than meets the eye. That is the
vision of the Veda that this whole universe is non-separate from the Lord because he is
the efficient cause as well as the material cause.

Since the Lord is everything, he is all the names, all the forms and therefore we can
invoke him in any name, any form. This is the mature way of looking at the worship of
God. We can pray to him in any language because he is Omniscient and therefore should
know all languages. In fact he should respond even before we call him. This is not
tolerance or anything, this is only understanding. They say that Hindus are tolerant of
various forms of worship. We are tolerant no doubt, but in this particular case, we are not
just tolerant. We have total acceptance as far as worship is concerned, prayer is
concerned. That is why very often we find many devatas, deities, in a typical room of
worship. Every aspect of the Lord is represented there. We look upon the Sun as God, so
we have Surya devata. We look upon air as God, so we have Vayudevata; we look upon
earth as God: so we have Prthividevata and so on. We worship the efficient cause, the
intelligent cause, and the material becomes the symbol for that. We worship the
omniscient, omnipotent Lord through the symbol of the material. The sun, the moon, air
etc. become the symbol through which we worship the Lord. We have a variety of
devatas through which we worship one God.

The Only God

We don’t even say ‘one God,’ we say ‘only God’. When you say there is one God that
means you are different from him and he is situated somewhere else. If God is different
from you, he does not include you, which means his power does not include your power.
If he is different from you, then he is different from me and all living beings. That means
God’s power does not include the power that you have, I have, that other gods and demigods
have, that the mosquitoes and the bugs have. Then he can only be mighty but not
Almighty. He is like my uncle who is also a very powerful man, but even a mighty
person is subject to limitations. Even the president of the U.S.A, a mighty person, is
subject to mosquito bites and attacks from viruses! Similarly, the mighty God will also be
subject to such limitations. So, understand, it is not that there is one God. There is only
God and so if someone invokes him as Allah that is fine; if someone invokes him as Jesus
that is also fine. We have no problem at all. If someone cannot accept the fact of people
invoking God in different names and forms, it is their problem. We have no problem
because we do not have many gods, we do not even have one God, we have only God.

Article courtesy of Vedanta Shala - Center For Traditional Vedanta