Did God create everything in 6 days?

As a believer I can appreciate the great faith that every Christian puts in the Bible and the belief that the wisdom therein, exposed by prophets, was received directly from God. Actually, if one does believe that the purpose of every holy scripture is to guide nations, one would like to think that God would not allow errors to creep into any of them.

However, the argument whether God created everything in six days is a great divide between faith and science. We think that one of these viewpoints must be wrong, we just can’t agree (outside of our own trenches) which one is it; does the problem lie in the literal reading of the Bible or is something wrong with the scientific methods of dating archaeological artifacts?

But what if both of these viewpoints are right? If we could assume that the “day of creation” mentioned in Genesis refers to God’s (working) day and not man’s, would it be easier to find the common ground between the two?

When we look into Genesis 1:5 (King James Version) we will find that the words ‘Day’ and ‘Night’ are capitalized. It can’t be an indication that God spoke them into existence because this paragraph talks about God giving names to certain phenomena after it already occurred. Was this done in order to distinguish them from what we name as ‘day’ (the period of earth day when there is visible light) and ‘night’ (the period of the same characterized with the absence of the visible light); which are actually created (God spoke them into existence) later on the 4^th day (see Genesis 1:14-19)? If the visible light (from stars) was created on the fourth day, what kind of light was created on the first day?

It is also clear that on the first day the earth existed only as an idea in God’s mind; it was “without form and void” (see Genesis 1:2). As Paramhansa Yogananda explains in his book “The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You” (SCC) this indicates the “creative thoughts of God that are the ideational causes of all beginnings” (see SCC, Discourse 10). Therefore, if the earth is just an idea and the light created on the fist day is not visible light but something else, why shouldn’t we assume that the word yôm (day) that Moses used in Genesis does indicate a very long time?

So, man lives on earth and measures his day as one complete revolution of this planet around its axis. Let us use an analogy to “calculate” the length of God’s day. From religion we know that God is omnipresent and lives everywhere throughout His creation. The new theory, “The Geometric Concept of Matter” confirms that He is everywhere and everything in the creation, but also that He exists even outside of the creation, because He is the substance out of which everything is created. But, because outside of the creation, space and time do not exist (and that is why we say that God is eternal), let us limit our observation inside the creation, and also to its part which is visible to our sensors – the universe.

The above mentioned analogy would be very simple if the universe would be rotating around its axis, but it is more likely that the universe lives “in a heartbeat”; a cycle that consists of the expansion which is followed by the contraction. Actually, cosmologists contemplate various scenarios for the end of the universe, but for the sake of the argument, let us assume that the universe will ultimately contract. Thus, we could hypothesize that the length of God’s day does equal in length to the time that takes the universe to expand plus the time it takes it to implode back to its origin (see the Big Bang theory).

Hinduism also has the concept of God’s day (a “Day of Brahma”) as well as the concept of the morning and the evening of the same. In the Bhagavad Gita (see Paramhansa Yogananda’s book “God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita” – referenced as “BG” in the rest of this text), Krishna tells Arjuna “At the dawn of Brahma’s Day all creation, reborn, emerges from the state of nonmanifestation; at the dusk of Brahma’s Night all creation sinks into the sleep of nonmanifestation.” (BG, VIII:18 ).

Thus, if we identify God’s day with the time of the existence of the creation, we can easily conclude that the length of this Day is not just 24 hours. On the contrary, “the lifespan for the whole universe, according to ancient seers, is over 300 trillion years” (see BG IV:7-8 and also Surya Siddhanta).

So, what is Moses telling us in Genesis? Is he saying that within the first creation cycle God created a blueprint of the creation (in His Mind) and that He worked out how to go about manifesting it by creating the ‘light’, which is “Cosmic Vibration’s first expression of creation (concurrent with the sound of Aum or Amen). It is the essence or building block of the trifold universe and man – ideational, the subtlest form of light as thought or idea; astral, the light of lifetronic energy; and material, the light of atoms, electrons, protons that structure all matter.” (BG III:14-15)

Is Moses also saying that God liked this “hobby“ so much (“…for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created”, Revelation 4:11), that He decided to periodically spend some time with it and that He also decided to do it in an orderly fashion? So, the time period when He plays with this “hobby”, God calls a Day of manifestation, and when He doesn’t play that’s called a Night of nonmanifestation?

Obviously, a mere mortal could hardly peek into the eternity and see when was this cosmic schoolhouse first incepted and how did God go about creating it. As Paramhansa Yogananda puts it: “History could hardly record complete cosmic or earthly dissolutions! At such times a planet, for example, and all things on it are converted into diaphanous energy. Only liberated masters, through visions, have seen such cosmic dissolutions; and no one except God has kept a record of how many times the earthly school-building and its pupils have been entirely dematerialized into astral or causal form, or into mere seed-ideas in the mind of the Creator, and then brought forth again throughout many ‘Days of Creation’ – periods of manifestation, which are then followed by ‘Nights of Dissolution’.” (BG IV:7-8 )

Was Moses such a liberated master? If we believe the miraculous story of his life, this is quite certain. Moses’ appearance with Elijah and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (see Matthew 17:1-8) and “the vibrating voice of the Father and the celestial cloud that enveloped the three masters and the disciples of Jesus distinctly reveals that the Heavenly Father had a special message for the world through the united liberated lives of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.” (SCC, Discourse 45). It is obvious then, that we should look for this special message in all the books that Moses left us. So, what does Moses tell us about the second creation cycle (i.e. what happened on the second day)?

On the second day, God went about organizing His creation into sections. He created a divider between them in order to keep them seemingly separate. Seemingly, because we have to remember that the only real substance of everything created is God and that He is the medium out of which the vibratory Light of the previous day was created. “The first manifestation of Spirit is Cosmic Light. God vibrated His cosmic consciousness as intelligent Cosmic Energy, or Cosmic Light…” (BG IV:1-2)

Due to this fact, God is omnipresent throughout the whole creation, but also, it can be said that He is everything; every created object and every created being and also the Intelligence behind it. No wonder why eastern mysticism exclaims that “this is all an illusion”, referring to the apparent separateness of things, forces and beings in this universe. Moses teaches us the same thing when he tells us that the divider (firmament) separates essentially the same stuff – waters, those “which were under the firmament” from those “which were above the firmament” (Genesis 1:7).

And this divider God had named Haven. “Different cultures and sects conceive of heaven according to their racial, social, and environmental habits of thought: a happy hunting ground; a glorious realm of endless pleasures; a kingdom with streets of gold and winged angles making celestial music on harps; a nirvana in which consciousness is extinguished in an everlasting peace. Jesus said: ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’ (John 14:2). These ‘many mansions’ include comprehensively the Infinitude of Spirit, the Christ Consciousness sphere, and the diverse higher and lower planes of the causal and astral realms. In general, however, the designation of heaven is relegated to the astral world, the immediate heaven relevant to beings on the physical plane.” (SCC Discourse 10) And that is exactly what Moses tells us in Genesis 1:7-8; that the divider between the higher realms of causal world, Christ Consciousness sphere and endless Spirit (“waters that are above”) and gross physical universe (“waters that are below”) is the astral heaven.

Coming back to the creation cycles, on the third day, God wanted to do something more with the “waters” beneath the heaven. He caused them to form the “dry land” or in other words he materialized “the gross elements into a physical universe” (SCC Discourse 10). But this universe was not exactly the same as we know it today, because stars were not present (i.e. they were formed on the fourth day). Does this mean that the whole universe was in darkness or there was some kind of perennial aurora light spreading everywhere?

In any case the universe was full of primordial planets on which some kind of grass, herbs and trees were growing. Of course, the question arises: did all of that vegetation appear instantly upon God’s command or did it slowly “evolve”? Well, if God did create everything at the beginning of His day, then all that He could do until the evening (quite a few trillions of years!) is to stand back and watch what He created with no further change. On the other hand a hobby provides more pleasure when one is continuously engaged with it, interacting, experimenting, constantly permuting it and inventing (evolving) new ways of playing with it.

The story of creation, as Moses tells it, describes what God did in each cycle of creation and wraps it up with “and the morning and the evening were” so and so day, giving us an indication of the time period during which things happened. This gives us a very good ground to assume that God was constantly busy, continuously changing His creation throughout the day to bring it to the desired state, after which He “saw that it was good “.

Also, at each creation cycle He added something completely new and He was happy about it. So what would we see if we stood aside as observers during this period when God was conceptualizing this creation? Would we see that things were constantly changing (evolving) and would we see that they even evolved from cycle to cycle until the 7^th day; when God decided that the structure of His hobby is perfect and no new concepts are necessary?

However, what we also learn from Moses is that although God used a mechanism of continuous creation (that we might perceive and name as evolution), nevertheless it was He who provided the first organisms from which to start the process; they did not appear by a mere chance!

In regards to the fourth creation cycle (fourth day) Moses tells us that God wanted to make the universe more dynamic. He created heavenly luminaries and threw them into motion. Planets also started to move, around stars, so day, night and seasons occurred, thus providing more changeable environment and infinitely more interesting one. Does this mean that the planets in the previous creation cycle were static? Perhaps they were, and perhaps we should also assume that the concept of the universe in constant motion, as we know it today, was worked out in the fourth creation cycle. Again the question is, did God hang all the stars and planets into their places instantly or did that come about (evolve) slowly through the application of laws of motion and interaction? Like in the case with the organic life, one would like to assume that this was a slow process though guided by God’s Intelligence through His laws.

On the fifth day, God created creatures of the sea and the birds. In the next creation cycle, He created land animals. All these animals, like plants before them, had the ability to procreate and produce offspring “after their kind ”. But there was nothing in this creation that would be in the likeness of Him, so God created man “in His own image” (Genesis 1:26-27). This new being was to subdue the material creation and have dominion over other creatures (Genesis 1:28) and thus become an extension of God’s will in the creation. Obviously, these children of God had the ability to create offspring too (God blessed them to be “fruitful and multiply”); but are we right to assume that this function was, in the likeness of their Father; fulfilled solely by using the power of their will (and not by a sexual intercourse)?

Thus, as we learn how creation became more and more complex, one conclusion springs forth; God did not stop creating until He evolved the matter into a form that is suitable of carrying and expressing His consciousness. However, though man is capable of fully expressing Godlike qualities (like saints and sages of all religions did throughout the history), it is clearly evident that ordinary humans do not behave in such a way. What has caused His children to forget their divine origin, Moses explains with the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3). “God, or the Divine Consciousness within the first created pair, counseled them to enjoy all other human sensibilities, but not to put their concentration on sex sensations. These were banned in order to avoid the use of the sex organs, which would enmesh humanity in the inferior animal method of propagation.” (Paramhansa Yogananda wrote the words of his guru Swami Sri Yukteswar in the book “Autobiography of a Yogi”).

In his book “The Holy Science” (HSS), Swami Sri Yukteswar describes how the creation of the threefold universe (consisting of causal, astral and gross material parts) was actually the evolution of Darkness, named so because it “keeps the Spiritual Light out of comprehension”. The denser the matter is (where “matter” here is a vibratory structure; either thought, life energy or gross matter) the greater the cover that hides the realm of Spirit. But by the power of the Omnipotent Love, the force of Attraction, the evolution of consciousness (and involution of Darkness) starts. On the material plane this process culminates with the vehicle that is capable of expressing God’s will, but consciousness of a man still has to go through the state of an angelic being before it can claim its status of a Son of God for the eternity (see HSS I:14).

Moses tells us that the evolution of Darkness lasted for the first two creation cycles and then it took another four creation cycles for God to design the evolutionary stepping stones for matter to go back into Spirit. After He was pleased with what He designed, on the seventh day He rested, which means that after the sixth day God was not actively directing the show, but let His agencies to run the universe according to His design and laws.

“When the divine schema and its operational laws and the ideations of forms and beings had been brought into existence under the direction of the active intelligence of God, the Father of creation, the directly active intelligence of God became inactive or indirectly active, allowing his reflection as the Universal Christ Intelligence, and His active Cosmic Creative Vibration of Holy Ghost, to continue the process of evolving the cosmic plans. Thus, when most of the desires of God to create had been ideated, His will and intelligence could take a rest while the universe continued under its own momentum of cosmic law and His divine agencies of Reflective Intelligence and Creative Vibration.” (SCC Discourse 32)

So, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth” (Genesis 2:4) and who knows how many generations (creation cycles) occurred since that very first Day when God started to create? And when you look at the stars, snowflakes, beautiful flowers and lovely human beings wouldn’t you agree that His design is good? How come carnivores evolved or bacteria and viruses appeared, you may say? Well, that’s another story and we shall leave it for some other time (but let’s just say that’s where Satan comes into the picture).

“I remember one day I was in the movies; movies have one fascination, because I see the whole world as movies. I was in the booth, and I saw the operator was reading a novel. And I saw this automatic machine was going on and the beam was causing on the screen a terrible horror picture. And I said ‘Lord, how is it; I have the whole show of the universe in front of me. You are this operator who is thinking of new plays, and Your Nature is throwing this beam in the sky. And I see the hero and the villain are nothing but pictures, nobody is killed.’ Many have been killed and shot in this picture, but I saw from the booth it was the light that had created the villain and the light had created the hero. And the Voice said ‘Remember, the villain is created so that you don’t become the villain, but that you love the hero. If you became the villain your throat has to be cut. And now you see that there is no villain, no hero, they are both pictures of my beam. After getting away from the villain and evil, or tasting poisoned honey, taste the honey of goodness and then come into the beam. And you will realize that all this world that you see, of terrible wars and troubles is nothing but a picture show, cosmic motion picture show in the sky.’ You will be surprised, you never analyzed that as soon as you sleep and dream, you can create a world like this, with people suffering from cancer and disease and wars, and some smiling babies born, old men dying; then when you wake up, you see that all those things were made up of your dream consciousness.” (Paramhansa Yogananda speaks; CD entitled “Beholding the One in All”, published by SRF).

Conclusion

“When, whence and why came creation into being? Who may make bold to read the Mind of the Infinite in seeking causes from the Uncaused, beginnings from the Ever-Existing, paltry reasons from Omniscience?…The One entertained a desireless desire to enjoy His Bliss through many, and the cosmos and its beings were born. The Unmanifested Spirit felt, ‘I am alone. I am conscious Bliss, but there is no one to taste the sweetness of My Nectar of Joy.’” (SCC, Discourse 1)

And thus He created everything in six days and on the seventh day He rested, but “of course, the seven days were not solar days, but consisted of aeonic cycles. The creation of the earth, as also its galactic neighborhood, took untold measures of time to make it habitable for man.” (SCC, Discourse 32)

So, one would like to believe that when looking for answers about God’s creation, we should examine all the available knowledge; correlate all holy scriptures and all science data and derive at conclusions that will be in accord with most, if not all of them. Each one of these is a piece in the great puzzle of Life. What we need in going forward is the wholesome science that will sincerely investigate all plausible theories including those theistic as well as wholesome religion which will stop being divisive and sectarian and encourage inter-religious dialog and study.

Nito

308 Dwapara ( A.D. 2008 )

Tags: Moses, Genesis, God, creation, evolution, religion

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