Where did we come from? Let’s ask heavens…

Humanity has been pondering on this question ever since intelligent creatures (homo sapiens) inhabited this planet and acquired the capacity to ask such profound questions.

No matter how we look at it, there are no easy answers, it is not easy to comprehend the incomprehensible. Having said that a curious observer’s task is to look at all possible perspectives. John Archibald Wheeler famous physicist of his time puts it brilliantly while pondering on the question. How come existence?

“Hurry up, I am not ‘I’ unless I continue to hammer at that nut, stop and I become a shrunken old man, continue and I have a gleam in my eye”

So lets select a vantage point and cast an eye over our existence as it unfolds in front of our eyes day and night. The easiest vantage point is to look through GOD’s eye.

GOD’s eye view suggests that one fine day the big guy in the sky was feeling bit bored while sitting in the void of nothingness and he ended up unleashing bit of his creative energy and we are all here. The belief goes that all the creatures were created in few days in all their glory, pomp and ceremony, including all the supporting ecosystem and the rules of the gameplay. Well that is a heck of a lot of productivity in such a short timespan.

There are many variations to the central theme of creation, for example..

Biblical traditions suggest that GOD created man (Adam) from his body or clay (the word ‘Adamah’ means clay or earth in ancient hebrew) and then somehow created woman (Eve) from Adam’s ribs (the word ‘eve’ means life in hebrew), both were expelled from heavens to populate earth as they ate the fruit from tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Vedic traditions suggest that GOD responsible for maintenance of the universe created the creator GOD from his naval via a lotus flower and the creator GOD created goddess from his body in order to populate the earth.

Hopi people of arizona suggest that their creator ‘Taiowa’, delegated the creation powers to another creator called ‘Sotuknang’ who created a spider woman, and gave her the power to create life.

People of iceland believe that drips of water from melting ice formed the shape of a man and some more dripps formed a cow, little more drips formed cow’s teat to nurse the newly born.

Yoruba people of Nigeria believe that their god ‘Obatala’ was looking at his reflection in a pond and moulded some shapes from clay resembling the reflections he saw and blew his breath in them.

Native American peoples of Wisconsin believe it was earth maker who scooped out a hole in a stream bank and made a hearth, he baked the people from clay.

Australian aboriginal dreamtime stories point to all life lying dormant under the earth’s crust as supernatural beings until one day everything suddenly sprung into life.

So no matter what garnish is applied to the story the central theme of the creation is that we are made from local materials using local technology.

Unfortunately these theories as such don’t yield much insight into the nature of existence itself, but they do end up providing vital clues about human nature and how it ends up crafting explanations about its own existence using materials and methods that are familiar to it. Similarly the look and feel of creator is also rendered using local materials and the character is often adopted from the local environment.

There are few fundamental issues with this top down approach, because on one hand it puts all the trust in the intelligent designer to make a perfect world as it advocates that all the creatures are crafted in the image of creator himself but on the other hand it ends up flooding the world with creatures that are frivolous enough to easily go astray and constantly require enforcement of external rules to guide their behaviour.

This theory can sure get its run for money if all the rules came preconfigured in all the creatures and no external intervention was ever required. But that being the case, there will be no fun for the playboy in the sky. Who would like to play with such boring, monotonous, robotic creatures ?

So theory proposes a world with all its imperfections, irregularity, deformity and distortions and the sole purpose of the key character in the story is to defy all the odds and be perfect to enjoy all the pleasures in places suspended somewhere in interstellar space that no one has ever been to.

These theories have kept masses amused for thousands of years and will continue to do so for foreseeable future. Moreover they generate employment for millions of people in industries specially designed to bring the divine experience to all the humanity in their favourite socio-cultural settings.

An alternate approach is to turn the theory on its head and look at us as we are built from bottom up. Well it will take a bit of time to build such an intelligent creature form bottom up, so lets wait till next article.

PS. This is mere articulation of answers by godmen and is really an account of their beliefs, observations, reflections, deliberations, introspections as passed down through generations, some of it may have mutated to some extent but strict rules prevented mutation once these were inscribed on paper.

Most ancient philosophies talk about five elements (earth, water, fire, air and sky) being the basis of life, which is reasonably accurate considering the scope of their observation and lack of refined techniques and instruments.

I have no intention to subject these to any truth test, this is just a view and all views are valid, none is real. I will explore alternate views as we go, so stay tuned.

Originally published at scriptgrandeur.wordpress.com on February 27, 2015.