Creating the Soul Body

Modern theory tells us that the universe began several billion years ago with a cosmic explosion from an infinitesimal point of nothingness. In the process, all forms of space, time, matter, and energy were created simultaneously—literally from nothing. This is called the theory of the Big Bang.

Although this theory is enormously popular, it amounts to little more than a modern creation myth. There is no doubt that it can be used to explain many circumstances that are otherwise unexplainable, but its starting premise is flawed logically. The dictates of pure reason tell us that something cannot be created from nothing. In order for the universe to be created, it must have been made from something, though modern science is mute as to what that mysterious something might have been. If we assume the Big Bang is a starting premise, the subsequent explanation of creation can be expressed logically, though it is rooted in an unexplained miracle.

THE FIRST VIRTUAL CREATION

The ancients avoided this trap by suggesting that the universe was created by God, or the field of pure consciousness.

This field is eternal: It existed prior to creation; it exists now, during creation; and it will continue to exist after creation. Prior to creation, however, the field was dormant, as if it were in a state of deep sleep; it was covered by a veil of pure ignorance. At that time, the layers of consciousness, universal gods, or universal vacuum states were all present, but they were “asleep”—that is, nonactive.

The Vedic seers held that the creation of the universe is cyclic, that the universal gods, like all living beings, experience cycles of waking and sleeping. When the gods sleep, creation is dissolved, and when they wake up, creation is initiated. Moreover, they held that these cosmic cycles of waking and sleeping, or creation and dissolution, span hundreds of trillions rather than a few billion years. For them, these cycles are governed by the force of time, which manifests the will of God, the Supreme Being.

When we as human beings begin to wake from the state of deep sleep, we experience an intermediate state during which we are neither fully asleep nor fully awake. It is a dreamlike state filled with forms of virtual reality, which respond to our slightest intentions and present our ideas in living color. The seers held that when the universal gods begin to wake, they experience a similar cosmic dreaming state characterized by virtual forms of reality. This is where the ancient theory of creation begins.

As in modern theory, the ancients held that the creation of the universe starts from a single point—but this was not viewed as a point of nothingness. Instead, it was seen as a point value of consciousness viewed as the seat of the first semiawakened soul, which was destined to become the Creator of the universe: When the Creator was first born from the cosmic womb, or the field of pure ignorance, he was in a cosmic dreaming state and was therefore semiawakened. He did not experience the empirical forms of reality that we associate with the waking state; rather, he experienced the virtual forms of reality that we associate with the dreaming state.

In the beginning, this cosmic dream was formless. It involved the cognition of the universal fields of transcendental sound and transcendental light associated with the first matched pair of layers located immediately above and below the half measure. Prior to this initial cognition, these fields were dormant, hidden by the veil of pure ignorance so that they were reduced to abstract fields of silent darkness. It was only when the Creator emerged from the cosmic womb, and then took his first step on the divine ladder, that the veil of ignorance was removed and the universal fields of light and sound shone forth in an instantaneous flash of pure intuition.

In the first hymn of the tenth mandala of the Rig Veda,1 this initial emergence of light from the darkness was compared to a great fire: “The great fire at the beginning of the dawn has emerged, and issuing forth from the darkness has come with radiance.” The hymn goes on to tell us that this great fire “filled all dwellings with shining light.” These are none other than the dwelling places of the imperishable souls that constitute collectively the metaphysical Logos. They correspond to the crystallographic cells of the transcendental superlattice, each of which serves as the abode for an imperishable point value of consciousness.

The hymn further explains that this great fire was the “embryo of heaven and earth.” It represents the first virtual form of the universe conceived within the cosmic womb on the scale of the first matched pair of layers immediately above and below the half measure. It was not insentient; it was personified as Agni (fire), the first ministrant priest, who is described as “all-knowing”2 and is cognizant of the path of the fathers that leads to the gods.3 This personified conscious fire represents the first virtual embodiment of the Creator at the dawn of creation.

As we have seen, this first virtual form of creation embraced initially the first two layers above and below the half measure. The layer below, which represents the luminous body of the Creator, was dominated by transcendental light and filled with local analytic power, and the layer above, which represents the Creator’s sonic soul, was dominated by transcendental sound and filled with nonlocal synthetic power. The first virtual embodiment of the Creator involved the union of his luminous body and his sonic soul, the first matched pair of layers in the cosmic spectrum.

The emergence of the great fire at the dawn of creation was the first virtual Big Bang and marked the onset of the virtual creation (shuddha srishti) wherein the universal layers, universal gods, or universal vacuum states, would become enlivened progressively as the awareness of the Creator simultaneously ascended and descended through them in sequence. It was only after the Creator had ascended to his own divine station that the virtual creation began to be transformed into the real creation. Only then did the virtual particles and waves begin their transformation into the real particles and waves from which was fashioned the empirical universe.

The real creation followed in the footsteps of the virtual creation. It started from the beginning, on the scale of the first matched pair of layers immediately above and below the half measure.

THE FIRST UNIVERSAL LIGHT

The ancient theory outlined above suggests that the oldest form of real light in the universe was created on the wavelength scale of the first layer below the half measure. Real light means observable light—the type of light that can be detected empirically.

The universal rule of thumb can be used to estimate this scale as 2 × 10^-1 centimeters, or approximately 2 millimeters. This amounts to a deductive prediction rooted in ancient principles and related to the oldest form of universal light that can be detected empirically. Is there any evidence, however, that this prediction holds true?

It turns out that there is. Electromagnetic waves with a wavelength that is roughly two millimeters lie within the microwave frequency band. Unlike visible radiation, microwave radiation is not visible to the human eye; therefore, the waves are hidden from direct human perception—but they are not hidden to electromagnetic instruments.

According to the history of science, microwaves were first discovered during the first half of the twentieth century and were employed for practical use beginning around the time of World War II. Since then, microwaves have become a part of our daily lives; we use them to cook our food and talk on our cell phones. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, when microwave antennas were first developed, scientists began to point them at the starry heavens, and therefore made a remarkable discovery: They found that the universe is pervaded by a uniform, homogenous, isotropic radiation field characterized by microwaves. This became known as the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).

Oddly, the CMBR has no known empirical point source; it is not emitted by the stars or galaxies or any of the charged particles floating in space. It appears to be a fundamental feature of the cosmological vacuum itself. Its origin was initially a mystery. Theorists eventually concluded that it represents the leftover remnants of the big bang, the hypothetical event that, billions of years ago, created everything from nothing in a huge cosmic explosion. Consequently, the CMBR is considered currently to be the oldest form of real light in the universe. This is consistent with the ancient theory, which suggests that the oldest form of real light in the universe should lie in the microwave frequency band. Yet the prediction derived from the basis of ancient principles is quite specific, predicting that the CMBR should have a characteristic wavelength of about 2 millimeters—the characteristic scale of the first layer below the half measure. Here, we can learn if this prediction holds true.

The CMBR is known to have a blackbody spectrum, which consists of electromagnetic waves of different wavelengths and frequencies, but the intensity of the blackbody radiation can be plotted out in the form of a spectral intensity curve as a function of wavelength. In each such spectrum there will be a maximum in the curve that corresponds to a particular wavelength, which characterizes the spectrum.

We know that the maximum of the spectral intensity curve for the CMBR occurs at a wavelength scale of 1.86 millimeters. The prediction derived on the basis of ancient theory is 2 millimeters, which agrees with the empirical facts to within a factor of 1. This suggests that we are dealing with a highly scientific system that is capable of making accurate empirical predictions.

No doubt, the ancient system is couched in religious-spiritual terms—but we can see that when it is interpreted properly, it has predictive power. So far we have seen that it can be used to predict accurately the scale of superunification as well as the characteristic wavelength scale of the oldest form of light in the universe. Are these just coincidences, or are we dealing with a genuine spiritual science, which was known to the ancients thousands of years before the first modern scientist was born?

THE FIRST UNIVERSAL SOUND