From Chapter 1: BEFORE THE BEGINNING
Whenever science or religion seeks the origin of the universe, they search for it in the past. The universe is being created now. Creation occurs in each moment, in your terms. The illusion of time itself is being created now. It is therefore somewhat futile to look for the origins of the universe by using a time scheme that is in itself, at the very least, highly relative.
Your now, or present moment, is a psychological platform. It seems that the universe began with an initial burst of energy of some kind (“the big bang”). Evolutionist cannot account for its cause. Many religious people believe that a god exists in a larger dimension of reality, and that he created the universe while being himself outside of it. He set it into motion. Many individuals, following either persuasion, believe that regardless of its source, the [universe] must run out of energy. Established science is quite certain that no energy can now be created or destroyed, but only transformed (as stated in the first law of thermodynamics). Science sees energy and matter as being basically the same thing, appearing differently under varying circumstances.
In certain terms, science and religion are both dealing with the idea of an objectively created universe. Either God “made it,” or physical matter, in some unexplained manner, was formed after an initial explosion of energy, and consciousness emerged from that initially dead matter in a way yet to be explained.
Instead, consciousness formed matter. As I have said before, each atom and molecule has its own consciousness. Consciousness and matter and energy are one, but consciousness initiates the transformation of energy into matter. In those terms, the “beginning” of your universe was a triumph in the expansion of consciousness, as it learned to translate itself into physical form. The universe emerged into actuality in the same way, but to a different degree, that any idea emerges from what you think of as subjectivity into physical expression.
The consciousness of each reader of this book existed before the universe was formed (in your terms) but that consciousness was unmanifest. Your closest approximation — and it is an approximation only — of the state of being that existed before the universe was formed is the dream state. In that state before the beginning, your consciousness existed free of space and time, aware of immense probabilities. This is extremely difficult to verbalize, yet it is very important that such an attempt be made. Your consciousness is part of an infinitely original creative process.
