Part One: Faith

Chapter Two:  Deity

2.1 Creation Myths

Physical evidence of our early religious life and it’s rituals are scarce for the next 20,000 years or so. No doubt our were busy refining their language skills and further defining, and classifying, all the curious things and events presented to their new and improved consciousness that we had acquired before leaving Africa some 100,000 years ago, according to prevailing theories¹.

This was a time in which much of our earliest thoughts on deity, and divine nature, were formulated. Sometime in the dawn of our history the deep conviction that death was not the cessation of life arose. They developed faith in a soul. It made no sense logically. It could not be reasoned from the physical evidence (even if they had the reasoning powers that a complex language can provide). Yet they discovered faith. They somehow knew (or wanted very strongly to believe at the very least) that life continued in some Other World. Next, backtracking as it were, they seemed compelled to explain where these two worlds came from in the first place. Unfortunately, with no written record of these early thoughts, the nuances of their mind set, or world view, are forever lost to us.

Some anthropologists have attempted to place religious significance on things like the cave paintings in France and other pre-civilization artworks. I think that perhaps some of them are getting carried away a little bit. It could be that sometimes the human mind just likes to play. Although "just" is not meant to minimize its importance. Play is as mysterious a phenomenon as sentience, although not limited to man (assuming that sentience is). Why should it arise? What purpose does it serve to the organism; what survival benefits does play bestow? If, as many reductionism scientists would claim, we are merely a collection of cells, little chemical factories, playing out preprogrammed algorithms according to the laws of nature, why play? I have as yet to hear anyone attempt to provide a compelling answer to this question. Most of the higher mammals exhibit playful behavior. Could it be that play is another holistic feature of increasingly complex organisms? But, again, I am getting ahead of myself.

By the time the first cities were being built in Mesopotamia (also referred to as the Fertile Crescent, and represents the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq) and in the Indus valley, religion, with all it’s accoutrements, appears in full bloom. By roughly 10,000 (Go To Timeline) years ago we had learned to express our sense of some powerful place where Unseen beings and forces existed through stories about creation. As our predecessors were starting on the long path to modern times, the answers to the questions of how life continued after death were held in the hands (and minds) of the priests for countless generations. They taught a simple truth: that the body contained a "spirit" or soul. There are some archeologists that suggest that the first cities themselves were built around the temples. Not the other way around as one might assume. This is an intriguing clue as to the incredible importance that Faith had on the lives of those simple people who lived so long ago. But where did the body, soul, and the worlds in which they exist come to be? We know from historical record that there were many gods being actively worshiped by our ancestors. Many of these where directly tied down to and arose from even earlier creation myths. Let’s take a moment and look at some of them now.

Of all the creation myths perhaps the most influential on the Judaic Faiths was the ancient Babylonian account known as the Eunumi Elish^1.5.

The story, never meant to be a literal account of creation, celebrates the victory of the gods over chaos and goes something as follows:

The Gods, fully formed, arose out of a vast and formless body of water. A sort of jumbled chaos where opposites were still combined; the world had not yet split into the fragmented dualities that we know today.

“When Sweet and Bitter

Mingled together, no reed was plaited, no rushes

Muddied the water,…”

A fascinating parallel needs to be pointed out here. As we will learn sections today’s science holds the belief that in the first few seconds after the Big Bang, all of the four primary forces were united into one Unified Force that split into the separate forces (gravity, electromagnetic, Strong Nuclear, and Weak Nuclear) of today as the universe went through a period of rapid expansion and cooling.

Note the similarity to the Jewish account:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis|1:1 , And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was_ upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Genesis|1:2

With its focus on duality, it also shares a similarity to the East’s concept of yin and yang, where at the same time dual and opposing forces, they are portrayed visually as black and white teardrops within one equally divided circle. There are also many striking parallels with later Greek creation accounts.

As Karen Armstrong points out in A History of God, "In Babylonian myth - as later in the Bible - there was no creation out of nothing [ex nihilo], an idea that was alien to the ancient world. Before either the gods or human beings existed, this sacred raw material had existed from all eternity."²

The first to arise out of this primordial and eternal goo were the Gods Apsu, his wife Tiamat, and Mummu. From them emanated a series of offspring. We will take a closer look at them in 2.2 The First Gods.

For the complete text of the Eunumi Elish please visit: http://www.piney.com/Enuma.html

So there was this primordial stuff, of which everything was shaped. The clay of God. The Waters of Life. What other ideas of creation arose from the Mind of Man?

The ideas to arise from the Indus valley are a little different than those of their Western brothers. Hindu, by the way, is not the name of a founder or ancient kingdom but is the Iranian variation on the name of the Indus river and originally referred only to the group of people living in the Indus valley area.  Hinduism places greater importance on the cyclical nature of reality, thus reincarnation, and sees the process itself, like God, as eternal, and at the same time constantly changing. A concept not lost on the west, but just not as philosophically satisfying as absolutes, as revealed in the parable of the Sumerian King who once asked his wise man what he could say on every occasion that would always be so, and the wise man replied “Circles and Changes, Circles and Changes.” In the Hindu cosmology, however, you will at once notice a common theme:

‘In the Causal Ocean there are innumerable Brahmas rising and disappearing like bubbles in the Atlantic. Brahma and his creation are all part of the material universe, and therefore they are in constant flux.’²⁸

Again we find reference to a body of water. What tickles me to no end is that, again, how did they get it so close? It has been understood for a great many generations now that, with only the Creationists dissenting, life originated in water. In the warm ponds that were once scattered across the otherwise dry land of the early earth. We understand further that life as we know it cannot exist without that one molecule common to all life no matter how extremophile it may be (extremophiles (extreme loving) are those life forms which exist (and even thrive) in extremely hostile conditions that were once thought incapable of harboring life - the bottom of the ocean, far northern ice sheets, deep within the earth’s crust, in boiling sulfuric springs, etc.  It’s as if some ancient technological race once existed that knew what we know now and that through the intervening ‘dark age’ the knowledge was saved, but only as distorted mythology. Or perhaps visitors from another world imparted the knowledge to us, again, only to be retained in a generalized mythical story. Come on now. I said “It’s as if…” Don’t think I’m going alien conspiracy on you. But it does excite the imagination to be sure. That time and again we find these parallels between ancient knowledge and modern knowledge that are nothing short of uncanny!

Continuing back on track, other than this intriguing parallel, the Hindu concept of Deity differs markedly from the Judaic one which we see as the text continues with:

‘In the material universe not even Brahma is free from the process of birth, old age, disease and death. Brahma, however, is directly engaged in the service of the Supreme Lord in the management of this universe--therefore he at once attains liberation. Elevated sannyasis are promoted to Brahma's particular planet, Brahmaloka, which is the highest planet in the material universe and which survives all the heavenly planets in the upper strata of the planetary system, but in due course Brahma and all the inhabitants of Brahmaloka are subject to death, according to the law of material nature.

At the beginning of Brahma's day, all living entities become manifest from the unmanifest state, and thereafter, when the night falls, they are merged into the unmanifest again. Again and again, when Brahma's day arrives, all living entities come into being, and with the arrival of Brahma's night they are helplessly annihilated.’

But even the Hindu with their repeating existence (of which it is said we are in the 9^th incarnation) there is a myth of an original beginning. Although here the reference to water is somewhat different than the large bodies of water in our prior examples, it is a water world in its own right: the womb - or more precisely, an egg.

‘The mythology of the story proceeds as follows. In the beginning there was nothing, but the undifferentiated and unmanifested. Everything was in perfect harmony. Lord Vishnu lay on his serpent, Shesha, his eyes were closed as he rested. When Lord Vishnu opened his eyes, the creation began. A lotus stock emerged from his navel and blossomed into a beautiful lotus. From the lotus was born Brahma. Brahma is the creator, in Hindu mythology. Brahma then proceeded to create the universe. Brahma created the entire universe in a little golden egg called the Hiranyaagarbha (the golden womb). Brahma created the heaven and the earth, the gods and the demons, the gandharvas and the humans, the plants and the animals, the stars and the planets and everything
else.”⁴

Again we also catch a glimpse of our other running parallel in the “undifferentiated”. As we have already noted, science is quite sure that in the first few moments after the big bang, undifferentiated was exactly the state of the universe. Although the quote above is not a first hand account, the translator was apparently impressed by this aspect of the preexistent universe by his choice of words in recounting the myth.  

Creation ex nihilo was also a concept foreign to the ancient Hindu.  When they say “In the beginning there was nothing…” they are quick to add "...but the undifferentiated and unmanifested." a reference to the non-dual nature of God.  In the Chandogya Upanishad (6.2.1-2) this is made clear:

In the beginning, son, this world was simply what is existent - one only, without a second. Now on this point some do say: "In the beginning this world was simply what is non-existent - one only without a second, and from what is non-existent, was born what is existent.

But, son, how can that possibly be? How can what is existent be born from what is non-existent? On the contrary, son, in the beginning, this world was simply what is existent - one only without a second.

The idea of something from nothing was a logical absurdity.

Other Creation Accounts

The ancient Egyptians like many creation accounts believed that existence arose from a primordial chaos also associated with water.  "When Ra's sun disk rose out of the watery primordial chaos of Nu, time itself began."⁵ 

Further Reading: 

http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/enuma.html

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm

#1  Competing with the “out of Africa” theory is one which suggests that modern man arose simultaneously among different groups of people already scattered around the globe at about the same time. This debate continues...  [Back to Text]

#1.5  For the complete and original text, see:  http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm  [Back to Text]

#2  Karen Armstrong - A History of God; pg. 7, /Ballantine Books [Back to Text]

#3  A.C. Bhaktivedanta - Bhagavad-gita - As It Is  [Back to Text]

#4  Gautham ([email protected]) see: http://www.hindunet.org/srh_home/1997_12/0045.html  [Back to Text]

#5  From Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.  [Back to Text]