THE CREATOR

The Vedic texts make a distinction between God, the Supreme Being, and God, the Creator. The Supreme Being was called Brahman (neutral gender), while the Creator was called Brahma (masculine gender).

The great god called Brahma in the Vedic texts is identical to the great god called Cosmos in the Hermetic texts. He represents the celestial embodiment of the entire living universe as a whole. Brahma was also called the adi-purusha (the first soul), because he was viewed as the first enlightened soul to be born at the beginning of creation—before anything whatsoever was actually created. Yet rather than being born from any mortal womb, he was born from the cosmic womb as a disembodied soul, a point value of consciousness, which nevertheless has the potential for infinity.

According to the Vedic creation myths, when Brahma was first born from the cosmic womb, or field of pure ignorance, he appeared as a thumb-size soul. Having come from the field of pure ignorance, the Creator was initially ignorant of who he was and why he had been born. Therefore, Brahma’s first utterance was “Ka?”—Sanskrit meaning “Who am I?” For this reason, he was initially known as the divine Ka, and an entire hymn is dedicated to him in the Rig Veda.

The myth goes on to tell us that God, the Supreme Being, informed his firstborn son that he was destined to become the Creator of the universe. Having received this instruction, Brahma then tried to create the universe, but could not succeed—he did not have the necessary knowledge, presence, or power. Feeling that he had failed in his mission, he turned to his Father for advice, and received the instruction to perform tapas.

The Sanskrit word tapas means “heating,” but it refers to the process of spiritual introspection whereby the senses are turned away from their objects toward the self.

In the beginning, the creative power of the Creator was weak because his awareness spanned only the first two layers of the cosmic spectrum, which lie immediately above and below the half measure. To realize his full creative power, he had to ascend and descend the divine ladder until his awareness reached the microscopic and macroscopic limits of creation. These limits mark the divine station of the Creator above and his shakti below. The Creator ascended the divine ladder by performing tapas. In the process, the universal gods—the dormant layers of consciousness—became warmed; the universal vacuum states became filled with the virtual excitations of light and sound, which were previously unseen and unheard.

The Vedic texts tell us that at this stage the universe existed as a “pure creation” (shuddha srishti), a virtual creation; no real forms of matter and energy were yet created. For empirical purposes, the universe at this stage would have resembled the vacuum of empty space—but the vacuum was not really empty. It was filled with virtual excitations of transcendental light and sound, which had been warmed or enlivened by the ascending and descending awareness of the Creator, the first enlightened soul in creation. We may compare the virtual creation to the warmed state of a seed prior to its actual sprouting. At that stage, all things existed only in a virtual or spiritual form, and the layers assumed the form of virtual vacuum states.

Upon arriving at his own divine station, the Creator became the embodiment of all the universal gods directly responsible for upholding the created appearance of the universe and of all the virtual vacuum states that exist on different scales of space and time. Having awakened or warmed the universal gods, the Creator then directed them to create the universe by transforming the virtual universe into the real universe. This was called the “impure creation” (ashuddha srishti).

Through his own divine will (which is nonlocal), by means of pure intention, he directed the gods to create the universe. In this way, the gods created all the material worlds and all the beings that inhabit them—the manifest from the unmanifest, or the real from the virtual. The Creator obtained the power to create when he ascended to his own divine station, because his awareness then embraced a vast spectrum of space-time scales. As a result, the analytic and synthetic powers of his awareness were enormous in strength—strong enough to conceive and create the entire universe. At that point, his awareness grasped simultaneously the whole blueprint of creation spanning billions of light-years, as well as all the microscopic parts of creation, by means of which that blueprint was to be executed over the course of billions of years.

This ancient Vedic myth has direct relevance to the enlightened human soul. Like the Creator, the enlightened soul is first born thumb-size from the cosmic womb. In order to grow to become like its Father, it must follow in the footsteps of the Creator. After being born, it must perform tapas and ascend the divine ladder, step by step, until it arrives at the station of the Creator. In the process, the enlightened soul experiences again the mechanics by which the universe was first created. By balanced ascending and descending of the divine ladder, it experiences the progressive enlivenment of the universal vacuum states, which correspond to the metaphysical layers above and below. Upon arriving at the station of the Creator, the enlightened soul becomes identified with the Creator, and conceives the entire universe as its own cosmic body.

This marks a major milestone on the path of immortality, which was emphasized by the ancient seers. At that point, the soul grasps the limits of creation as well as the largest and smallest space-time scales that have direct relevance to the creation of the universe.