Was The Cosmos Created?

In the beginning, there was nothing. But true nothingness is impossible. Nothingness will always have the Potential to be something. So true nothingness would have to be absent of Potential. But Potential is the necessary byproduct of nothing. Nothingness and Potential must exist together. Nothing and Potential. The necessary reality of Potential then negates “no-thing”, and leaves only Potential.

Of course, materialists will argue that Potential is not a thing because it is non-material. But Potential surely exists. Potential, being that which is not yet but could be. We act as if Potential exists all the time. We even know potential exists as a scientific fact. This is where we base the laws of physics and the fundamentals of reality.

Consider this quick example. Hydrogen and Oxygen have the Potential to form water. They will never form BBQ sauce. The Potential for Hydrogen and Oxygen to become water exists, although prior to its formation, is not a material reality. If we define material existence as a criteria for reality, then we’re doing ourselves a disservice in our pursuit of the Truth.

So if we start with nothing, we must have only potential.

This is the void. Chaos. Chaos means disorder and confusion. The chaos of the void is both nothing and everything that could be at once. It is pure Potential.

Then there was Gaia from nothing — With nothing — Necessarily.

Greek mythology associates Gaia with fertility, and the force of creation itself. Fertility is Potential. The Potential for things to be created. Potential by definition as that which is not yet, but could be. This is the force behind creation. For anything to be created, there must be Potential. When starting with nothing, Potential is necessary and cannot be avoided. This is symbolically represented of Gaia (the force of Potential and creation) coming into being from from the void. Her existence is necessitated through nothingness, just as Potential is imbedded in nothing.

Everything that could be must follow a blueprint. It doesn’t just happen. There must be a pre-existing order for things to follow. Chaos has the Potential to become order. This order may not yet be a physical reality, but the rules and structure of this order exists prior to the material manifestation. This is the way things must happen so they logically and causally make sense. Everything that happens in the physical world only happens in accordance with what can happen. It’s as if there is a pre-existing structure to reality. A cosmic blueprint for the way things work. This is the Potential. This underlying structure of reality. This is the way things must be and cannot be other than how they are. The rules that reality follows. The Word from which the physical world emerges from chaos. These possibilities of happenings are like railroad tracks the material world can follow. Things cannot happen other than how they are able to. In a way, the Potential exists as true before these things actually come to be. The necessity of causality and order exists as Potential, which is independent of the material world. The material world relies on this potential and structural order to operate.

So, how does stuff just happen then? How does creation and the Cosmos come from pure Potential? How does something come from nothing or from just Potential?

All we know with a high degree of certainty is that:

1. If we start with nothing, we necessarily have Potential.

2. Potential is not nothing, so we can’t actually have pure nothing.

3. Potential is necessary for the Cosmos to function.

The big question is how we go from just non-physical Potential to the material Cosmos.

Well, we know it had to happen. If there was a point where there wasn’t a material Cosmos, yet now we see that there is a material Cosmos, surely the material Cosmos had to come from nothing/Potential. But how? How do we go from just non-physical Potential to the material Cosmos

The answer: We don’t have to go from a non-physical Potential to the material Cosmos. The material Cosmos could have always existed and doesn’t need a beginning. Our universe had a beginning, but the material that makes up our universe could have existed for eternity. If we are being honest with ourselves, we don’t know what matter was doing before the Big Bang and the rapid expansion of our universe.

Matter exists. This is a fact which we can observe. And matter cannot be created or destroyed, as it is commonly attributed to the work of Einstein for this conclusion. If matter cannot be created or destroyed, then, it has always been. So, it could very well be the case that matter has always been embodying the structure and order of Potential. There is no need to understand how Potential gives rise to creation or the Cosmos, because “creation” has always existed, just like Potential has always existed. “Creation” may have never been created but instead could have always been, forever. Both the material and the underlying order by which the material operates could be eternal.

While it is true that mere Potential does not necessitate the Cosmos, it seems likely that the matter of the Cosmos has always been here. Since it’s always been in the physical world, it had to follow the structure of the physical world.

So what happened before the Big Bang?

Well there had to be something before the Big Bang. The universe could not have been a singularity before it became a singularity. Otherwise it always was a singularity forever, and then randomly exploded at an arbitrary moment. Or the matter of the physical universe was doing something else prior to the singularity that preceded the Big Bang. This could suggest that the matter of our current universe was once something larger than a singularity prior to it being a singularity. Or it was always a singularity and then the expansion of our universe randomly happened… But this randomness is absurd and negates causality of the physical universe. This randomness contradicts all of physics for something to just “happen”. Why? Why did it happen? Why then and not another time? By the laws of causality, there must have been a reason. Unless we’re accepting randomness genuinely happens on the cosmic and natural level which is a huge problem for the deterministic model of reality. This defies all logical and causal possibilities.

Or we can speculate that the expansion of our universe wasn’t random and the universe chose to rapidly expand. This means the universe as a whole is capable of actually choosing something and means it might have some form of cosmic consciousness.

Both these implications for a random expansion of our material universe seem absurd, and at the very least, debatable. The most reasonable answer is that matter has always been here, and the matter was doing its thing before the singularity that gave birth to our universe. Since matter is eternal, then so is the order that underlies it. The order of the cosmos and its Potential is eternal. It is “God”, for lack of a better word. Or perhaps more accurately, God is a symbolic representation of this cosmic order and Potential. Perhaps God is the best way to describe something so infinite and beyond our comprehension that underlies the fundamentals of reality.

These ideas are not intended to provide a literal account for creation, but rather to offer a conceptual framework to understand how we arrived to where we are right now. By understanding what the basic building blocks of creation are in theory, we can understand why they couldn’t have actually happened in the creative fashion the Big Bang theory suggests. Through considering the concepts of Nothing, Potential, and the properties of matter, we can speculate about a material reality prior to the Big Bang and the “creation” of our universe. When we combine this understanding with the way we know how the world works right now, we get a fuller understanding of why things are at all, how they came to be, and most importantly, why that makes sense. Basically, we get to the conclusion that the cosmos has always existed. Asking “how was the cosmos created?” is an invalid question because it implies the cosmos must be created. A better question is removing “how” and asking “was the cosmos created?” To which the answer seems to be “no”.

Part Two:

That’s all fine and dandy, but how does Consciousness come to be?

Well, since matter operates according to non-physical eternal principles, eventually through the process of evolution by natural selection, matter becomes so complex that the non-physical eternal order “bleeds through” to the physical. The material world emulates the eternal world to such a high degree of complexity that the perceptions and information processing of life become aware of itself, its existence, and its own morality. Something that is capable of perception and continues to evolve and enhance its perceptual capacity will eventually perceive the world to such a high degree of effectiveness that it becomes aware of itself. Once this happens, it is obviously one of the most complex things to ever exist. Its awareness allows it the capacity to reflect on itself and its own embodiments of the patterns of creation, its embodiment of the structure and rules of the physical world, and its own embodiment of the eternal principles of reality. Consciousness recognizes itself in the grand narrative of how the world works, and the structure of reality unfolding before us.

The implications of this are that You are the universe experiencing itself. Your consciousness is the eternal truth peaking in on itself and realizing what it is. The underlying structure and order of conscious experience exists outside of time and space, outside of the material universe, but provides the blueprint for which matter is able to arrange itself in such a way to become aware of what it is. How this happens is a question I’m not qualified to address. But regardless of how conscious experience comes to be, You are It.