We Were There When It All Began

We Were There When It All Began When you have journeyed all the way back to before the beginning, and come to rest in the empty void before the universe was born, it can seem like the end of the path. Where else could there possibly be for you to go? The very notion of seeking for liberation, for enlightenment, for meaning or purpose seems absurd. The question Who am I? is answered before it is asked. And the question Why am I here? simply does not arise. In traditional enlightenment, this is the end of the path. But the journey of Evolutionary Enlightenment does not end here. Why? Because the cosmic experiment that is life did not end here. If that empty ground, where every question is answered, was all there was to know and to discover, why would the universe exist? Why did something come from nothing? Think about this for yourself: In the experience of the ground of Being, as you have discovered for yourself, there is no desire to do anything, no impetus whatsoever. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to be or become. That's what it was like before the universe was born, remember? And yet, here we are. Out of that utter peace, from the depths of that desirelessness, for some reason this miraculous process burst forth. Why? Why did something come from nothing? This is not an abstract philosophical question but a profound spiritual contemplation that can take you to the essence of what it means to be alive. Why did something come from nothing . and become light, energy, matter, life, consciousness, and you —fourteen billion years later reading these words? Why are you here? If the eternal perfection that is the Source of everything knows no desire, why would the universe have emerged? If the ground of all things has no impulse but to be, why did it become? But it did. And thanks to evolutionary science, we can behold just how far this miraculous explosion of Becoming has brought us in the fourteen billion years since that initial burst. We can reflect on its awe-inspiring progress, and wonder at its ever-greater complexity and integration and creativity. And we can ask ourselves, why did all of this come from nothing? I believe that for a human being today who aspires to find enlightenment, that question is an essential part of awakening. It is not enough to follow the question Who am I? to that timeless place where all questions dissolve. We also need to know: Why am I here? And to find the answer to Why am I here?, understanding the primordial moment when something came from nothing is crucial. We need to know what actually happened at the very beginning, at that instant when Being gave rise to Becoming. When I ask this question, I'm not just talking about whether you believe in a biblical God or a big bang, or a whole series of cosmic explosions. I'm talking about a different kind of knowing—a direct, experiential recognition of what occurred in that moment fourteen billion years ago. You don't need a powerful telescope to see all the way back to the big bang—you can go there, right now, in your very own experience. * * * Scientists look at the big bang from the outside, so to speak, using complex instruments and the laws of physics to show us the explosion of light and energy, which became matter, which, in turn, gave rise to life, from which emerged the capacity for consciousness. But the perspective I'm sharing with you is one that looks at that very same event from the inside —that gets right beneath the surface of the stillness before the beginning, and locates the very impetus behind that primordial moment of birth. You see, the big bang is not just a metaphor or a disputed scientific theory about what occurred fourteen billion years ago. It's happening right now. Something is coming from nothing every second. You might not be conscious of it, but it's true. Your own experience of action and reaction is not unbroken—there are countless moments of zero between each and every thought, every impulse, and every response. Something is coming from nothing, in and through each and every one of us, constantly. If you slow your experience down, and keep slowing it down, you'll start to see that there is a vast chasm of empty space that is the foundation of everything that is occurring, the ground out of which each impulse arises. Even as you are aware of the body, of the passing of time and the movement of thought, beneath it all you can become conscious of this current of stillness that is the ground of Being. Because you can locate that empty ground in your very own experience, you can also locate the seed of everything that came out of that nothingness. When you contemplate the ground of your own Being, you can begin to intuit for yourself what that very moment when something came from nothing must have been like. * * * Let yourself sink, once again, into that place before the beginning. What could be more still or peaceful than that empty ground? Absolutely nothing has yet occurred. When you rest in that deepest dimension of yourself, you experience a peace that is absolute. There is a miraculous quality to it, because it is infinitely deeper than any experience of peace, tranquility, or contentment that you could imagine with the mind. This is what it must have been like before the universe was created. In that emptiness, you experience two things. First, there is unconditional freedom, which is the inherent quality of consciousness when it is unencumbered by attraction to anything other than itself. But also, in that empty no-place, there is something else. If you pay close attention to your own experience, you will begin to realize that there is more to nothingness than meets the eye. The nothingness is not nothing. Nothing is happening there, and yet it is deeply compelling. If you get into a deep state of meditation it's absolutely enthralling. There is something in the nothingness that, once discovered, is absolutely absorbing. In that unmanifest domain, nothing has happened yet ... but everything is possible. Everything came from that no-place! So even in the absolute nothingness prior to the big bang the potential for everything must have existed. That is what captivates your attention as you rest in that empty stillness—the sense of infinite potential. It is experienced as a suspended state of absolute awakeness, a quiet tension that exists in consciousness because everything is possible. Everything is possible, but nothing has yet occurred —that is the vibration in the ground of Being, dancing just below the surface. That's what you begin to feel when you put your attention on the moment when the universe was born. * * * The essence of the new enlightenment, which I call Evolutionary Enlightenment, is found in that precise moment when nothing became something. This is the revelation that liberates: that in your very own experience you can find that same vibration—the same energy, the creative tension that initiated the entire process at the very beginning. Who or what was it that initiated this process? What energy or intelligence made the choice to take the miraculous leap from formlessness to form? When you experience that vibration for yourself, you know without a doubt that the birth of the universe could not have been an accident, a random mechanical act. Somewhere, somehow, a choice must have been made. This is why I use the term God to represent whoever or whatever made that choice. That creative principle, that initial impulse to become, could only have been generated by an energy or intelligence that is nothing less than godlike. So in the way that I am using the term, God is not "out there," somewhere up in the sky. God represents the creative principle, the First Cause, or Eros, the elemental driving force behind the evolving universe. God is what I call the "evolutionary impulse"—that overwhelming urge to Become that emerges from the deepest dimension of Being itself, which of course, is not separate from your very own consciousness. That is why we could say that at the very beginning, at the moment when the initial leap from formlessness to form took place, you and I were there. Think about it for a moment. Is there anywhere else that you could have been at the moment when the universe was born? We are told that all matter, time, and space was once a great singularity—compressed into one fine point. When something came from nothing, that one point was the only place to be. So we were all there. We were there ... but we were there as Before the universe was born, the One had not yet become the many. So there was only You, and You were alone. And since you were the only one, the only reasonable conclusion is that you made that choice to do this. To create the universe. As that creative principle, you/we/I chose to take form. * * * Let yourself follow this theological fantasy, just for a moment. Imagine what it would be like to be God, resting in a perfectly blissful, overwhelmingly peaceful state of being for infinite eons of no-time. In that profound stillness, nothing is missing, and there is no desire whatsoever. Absolutely nothing has occurred. That's where you were before the beginning, before the big bang. Perfect peace and boundless bliss. Quietude without end. Unburdened by the weight of existence, you could not have been more content. Yet, for some reason, out of that perfect contentment, you made a decision to create the cosmos. You chose to manifest a material universe from your own unmanifest emptiness. You could have continued to rest happily in Being, meditating on nothingness for more countless eons of infinite no-time. But you had already done that—forever! So you chose to take the unthinkable step and endeavor to manifest your own self in and through form. Where did that choice come from? Where, in that empty perfection, would the impetus arise to do something so vast, so complex, so overwhelming? What could be a greater challenge than to create something out of nothing, to manifest a material universe before form had ever existed? But you apparently decided to take that unimaginable step. How do I know? Because it's happening. Because we are here, now, fourteen billion years later, reflecting on this very question. And considering the fact that at the deepest level of consciousness itself, there is only One, and that One is who you always are, you would have to conclude that at every step of the way—from before the beginning in infinite no-time, through the choice to take the plunge from formlessness into form, and up until the present moment—it could only be you and you alone who is responsible for all of this. Who else could it possibly be?