How did the universe come into being? Is there a Creator? These questions have echoed through the corridors of human consciousness since time immemorial. The Sufi mystic Rumi beautifully captured this eternal quest when he wrote: “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” Yet while we might never fully grasp the absolute beginning with our limited minds, mystical traditions throughout history have offered profound insights into the nature of creation.
The Language of the Ineffable
Before we venture into these deep waters, we must acknowledge a fundamental challenge: our language, which evolved to describe things within our world, struggles to capture that which lies beyond it. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh expressed this limitation perfectly: “Words are only the finger pointing to the moon.” We’re attempting to describe the indescribable, to put into words that which transcends all words.
Nevertheless, drawing primarily from the wisdom of A Course in Miracles and other mystical traditions, I want to venture an answer to these eternal questions. For those who approach these words with an open heart and a willingness to feel their deeper meaning, they may offer clarity. Those who become entangled in the inevitable contradictions that arise in any such description might dismiss them as nonsense. The choice lies with the reader.
The Paradox of Creation
Let me state my conclusions upfront, paradoxical as they might seem: Is there a Creator? Yes! Did God create the world? No!
The Jewish mystic Martin Buber once wrote: “God is the mysterium tremendum that appears and overthrows, but God is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.” This insight helps us approach the seeming contradiction in our answer.
Understanding Divine Love
First, we must understand that God is best defined as pure Love—nothing more, nothing less. The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart captured this essence when he said: “God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by subtracting.” God is Love in its most absolute, pristine form. Such a being would never create a world where suffering, fear, and sorrow exist even as possibilities. God can only create in accordance with His own nature, bringing forth pure Love through acts of pure Love.
Moreover, contrary to what some spiritual traditions suggest, God has no need to experience Himself through a world of suffering, no need to rediscover Himself through the labyrinth of material existence. In Perfection, there is no need for such experiences.
The True Creators
So who, then, is the Creator? Who brought the universe into being? We did! And by “we,” I don’t mean just humans, but rather all beings who are, at their core, God’s creations. As the Upanishads declare: “You are that” (Tat Tvam Asi)—recognizing our fundamental divine nature while acknowledging our current state of apparent separation.
When it’s said that we were created in God’s image, this doesn’t mean that God possesses human characteristics. Rather, it means that at our essence, we are what God is—pure Love. In His all-encompassing Love, God created us as He is: creators capable of creating as He does.
The Tiny Mad Idea
Within a part of divine creation (within us!), a thought arose. A Course in Miracles describes this pivotal moment with profound insight:
Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects.
This thought—the possibility of being separate from God—triggered a chain reaction where everything seemed to split into ever-smaller parts, resulting in the universe we see today. Because this separation didn’t originate from God, it isn’t fundamentally real; it’s an illusion, a deception, as the mystical traditions of the East have long taught.
The Nature of Illusion
The great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi explained this state of illusion perfectly: “The world is illusory; Brahman alone is real; Brahman is the world.” This paradoxical statement captures the essence of our situation—while the world of separation appears real to us, it remains fundamentally illusory, sustained only by our belief in its reality.
The Divine Presence
However, although God didn’t create this world of separation, He isn’t absent from it—how could He be, when He is all that truly exists? The beauty we perceive in the world reflects God’s beauty; the love we experience reflects divine Love. Everything else—all the suffering, all the sorrow—is our own creation. We inflict these experiences upon ourselves through our belief in separation.
The Call to Awakening
God knows this world isn’t real; it’s more like a dream. As the Persian mystic Hafiz wrote: “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” His deepest desire is for us to awaken from this dream of separation and return to Him—to return to a place we never truly left. For just as a dreamer isn’t really in the dream world, we have never truly been separate from our Source.
Practical Implications
Understanding creation in this way has profound implications for how we live:
- Our suffering isn’t divinely ordained but self-created, and therefore can be undone
- Our journey isn’t about reaching somewhere new but about awakening to where we already are
- Our task isn’t to create connection with God but to remove the barriers to our awareness of it
- Our spiritual practice isn’t about becoming something different but about remembering our true nature
The Way Forward
As we embrace this understanding, we begin to see that our spiritual journey isn’t about traveling a great distance or achieving something new. Instead, it’s about awakening from the dream of separation into the reality of unity that has always been there. As A Course in Miracles teaches, we’re not seeking to create a new reality but to recognize the eternal truth that has never changed.
The Challenge and the Promise
This view of creation challenges our conventional understanding of reality. It asks us to question everything we think we know about ourselves and the world. Yet it also offers profound hope. If our separation from Love is illusory, then our return to Love is inevitable. If our suffering is self-created, then it can be undone through a shift in perception.
The Path of Return
The path back to truth isn’t about adding something to ourselves but about removing the barriers we’ve placed between ourselves and Love. It’s about letting go of our investment in separation and allowing ourselves to remember our true nature. As Meister Eckhart said: “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
In future articles, we’ll explore practical ways to implement this understanding in daily life. For now, I invite you to sit with these ideas, not just intellectually, but with your heart. For it’s in the heart that the deepest truths about our relationship with the Divine are most clearly revealed.