I have already answered this question more than once, and the fact, I’ll repeat in short, I’ll try to be brief, but the fundamental approach to such questions should be analytical and logical. First you create your platform soundly, then you cannot be difficult. The point is that you should always begin with eternity. Something must be eternal, because everything cannot automatically happen. Out of nothing, only nothing can be born.
This is a fundamental accepted principle of all science, every type of science, that something is required to create something. A change of form can take place, energy can turn into matter and matter can turn into energy, but nothingness can create nothingness only, if you call it a creation. So the point is, when we see so many things here on earth, one principle, one fundamental conclusion is drawn, that there is no getting away from eternity. There has to be eternity for something. Some being must be eternal. You understand? The sum total of all we see should not be more than what was eternal. This is an equation which cannot be challenged by any sane man in the world.
Now, having understood this, the question is whether the eternal being was a conscious being or an unconscious being. You follow the second step? There are both possibilities. Now, we know that consciousness is born out of physics and chemistry, while no chemical law and no physical law can create consciousness. They are unrelated phenomena. It is a new value added to the laws of chemistry and physics, what we call consciousness. Unless there was consciousness before, it could not come into being, out of nothingness. You follow the third step?
Because either there has to be an eternal being who is conscious, or an inanimate matter can be eternal and there is no harm in either of the two. So, how to decide whether the conscious being was eternal or inanimate matter was eternal? This is the fundamental question. If you solve this, then you will come to that proof of existence of God. How to go about it? That’s the most important thing. How can you decide whether consciousness is eternal in existence, or some conscious being is eternal?
If just dead matter is eternal, and consciousness is a quality born out of dead matter, that is to be decided. Now, the most important thing is that when you see organization, an organization can happen by chance, or it cannot happen by chance. There are two types of organizations you come across. For instance, if you throw the dice, it can fall on the number 6. You throw it again, it may fall again on the number 6. If you throw it again, it may fall on number 6, 3, 4, 5 times. But if you throw the dice 100 times, it’s impossible, unless there is a certain defect or some clever trick is played upon the person who is playing dice, and that has been manipulated.
That is a different thing. I am talking of normal phenomena. I have a dice which you throw, it should either show up 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6, because 6 is the ultimate number. But much more so, it is impossible to believe that you keep on throwing dice, that it should go on in ascending order, showing numbers from 1 to 6, and then going back to 1 and then again rising to 6, or going backwards from 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then again 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 6. If this happens continuously, then you can’t believe that a chance has played any part in this. Or can you?
Then an organizer has to be believed, which has some influence over the dice, and it is under that influence that that particular type of organization is being born. Now, scientists who have discussed this question, as far as the creation of life goes, they have come to the conclusion, and I am talking of not religious scientists, irreligious scientists, agnostics, they have discussed this problem and they have come to the conclusion that for the very first brick of life to be made, so many chances are required in a certain order, and in a continuous certain order, that it is absolutely impossible for us to conceive of a way how it could have happened. They don’t say in so many words that there is a God, but they pose the problem in a manner that the only conclusion one can draw is that there has to be an organizer before it.
For instance, one of the scientists has calculated this, and he says that for the first step of life to be developed into one basic brick, which is called DNA by them, the chances required are so many that if I illustrate to you, I should illustrate it in the manner that you put some ABC alphabets on dices, and throw the dices, and you expect them to fall in an order that a meaningful word is created, and another meaningful word is created, and another meaningful word is created, and there are vowels and consonants and then verbs and infinitives and other things, names, nouns, etc.
All in such an order that they make a meaningful sentence. So you throw the dices, a few dices again, and again after a full stop a new sentence is born. And then you throw them again and a new meaningful sentence is born. And you go on repeating until thousands and thousands of pages are created in this manner, with complete punctuation and with subject so deep, as if a team of scientists had worked their lifetime to create that book. If that can happen by chance, then he says it can happen by chance that the DNA could be created just by fumbling of nature.
A Russian scientist, as I explained it many times before, who obviously was an atheist, he in 1967 perhaps, or 66, when a conference on the creation of life was held in Moscow, and that book is published, Origin of Life, I think it will be available here, you can read that paper in that book by a Russian scientist, who says that it is alright to believe that over a very long period of 6-4 billion years and 4.5 billion years life came to evolve slowly and gradually. It appears to be so simple a statement.
And you may say that yes, it can happen. But if you look at how many steps are involved, how many chances are involved, if I see that analogy in the concept, I mean by illustrating to you a certain phenomenon of nature, that scientist tells us, further explains it, that it is possible for any atom in any matter to suddenly leave the surface to which it is a part and jump in a certain direction. And he tells that it is happening. Atoms and molecules are shooting out of their orbits or out of their fixed places, and they are jumping in many directions. And you don’t know because it is such a small and significant phenomenon, as compared to the total mass of things we see, that it is impossible for anybody to notice the slightest change in weight or anything happening.
But it goes on. The scientists know it. So he says it is possible on the table on which I am writing this thesis, he says it is possible for an atom of that table or a molecule of that table to jump out to a height of one foot from the surface. So it is possible for the second one as well, and the third as well, and the fourth as well, and from top to bottom it is possible for them to take a jump for exactly one foot in a certain direction. Mathematically speaking, it is possible. But, only scientifically speaking, it is possible for every atom to behave in that manner.
But mathematically speaking, it is impossible for all the atoms of the table to jump in one direction exactly to the same height simultaneously, with the result that suddenly the whole table is lifted one foot high. He said for each atom it is possible. But for that chance to happen, that the whole table jumps up because the entire number of atoms or molecules jump in unison with each other, that is impossible. He says exactly this is the state of affairs with the origin of life as we see. After all that study that we made, we have come to the conclusion that the chances involved are so many just for the creation of life that we can’t know how it can be explained.
So a conscious being is required before matter. It is not the law that every being must be perceived by some other. That is not the law. The beings which cannot organize themselves, which cannot design, which are unconscious, if they are found in a position of organization, then a conscious organizer has to perceive them. That is all. Just two steps are required. And a third scientist also refers to the same subject. About two years ago a book was published in America and it is quite a well-known book now, as I mentioned earlier, by Lyell and Singer.
He has another illustration to explain this phenomenon of chance. He says if you can see the farthest away quasar of the universe, which is, say, about four billion years or some billion years, light years away from us, or maybe less, but I mean, it is absolutely phenomenal that distance. Suppose that quasar is that much away from us, it is the farthest end of the universe. And it is so huge that the whole system of this, the star system of our sun, that can be contained in that quasar, it is so big. And if it is possible for somebody to throw a dart in direction of that and try to hit the central atom of that quasar, I don’t know the pronunciation of quasar, I think it’s quasar, but Q-U-A, quasar. Q-U-A-S-A-R.
So he says if somebody attempts to hit the central atom of that quasar from Earth, and if it is possible for him to be given power enough so that the dart can direct and travel in that direction, if it is possible for that dart to hit the central atom from here, then it is possible for the light to evolve of itself. Otherwise not possible. Now, those who know those distances, those phenomenal distances, how much light travels in one year, and how far away that star is from the Earth, which is on the edge of the universe, and how it is impossible to hit an atom, even if it’s close here, I mean you can’t hit the central atom of your own finger. It’s impossible. So how it is possible to achieve that, according to that scientist, this is the possibility of the first break of life, not the whole evolution, but just the first break of life to be born out of chances.
So the point is just simply this. If you see organization, and if you know that that organization could not have been born out of itself, then you must concede that there is an organizer preceding it. That is all. Suppose again, after a million years or so, if the mankind is totally destroyed, new generations, new beings come into being here on Earth, and they discover an aeroplane, after digging the Earth. And then a debate starts, that was there something before the aeroplane or not? Or was it born out of itself? And people are divided into theists and atheists.
Some believe there must be someone before the aeroplane, and the others say no. It came into being. Why not ask the question, who created that person who was before the aeroplane? It’s illogical, we don’t believe anybody created it. And then somebody discovers a smaller aeroplane, and he laughs at those who believe. He says, look here, I have discovered a smaller aeroplane, so now we know that this bigger aeroplane was born out of the smaller aeroplane. And step by step they work backwards, and find the first wheel that was created by man. And say, look here, the whole problem is solved. Everything can be organized in order and strata and species.
And right from the first wheel, which is so simple that could have happened by chance, we can add bit by bit to that organization, until an aeroplane can be built. If you study the scientific achievement of man, from the first wheel when he created it, to the final aeroplane, whichever is final so far, in all its sophistication, you can always refer to each step, over a number of years, how this step followed the second one and the third one, and like Darwin placed the whole known world of animals into order and species and traced them into stratas, so an aeroplane can be traced. Now, what would be the conclusion of that debate? Some atheists would become more firm in their belief that nobody created aeroplanes, because we have seen an ascending order of simple facts gathering one after the other.
But the other, who believe that there must be some being before that aeroplane who was conscious, they would say, yes, there are so many steps involved. But the organization cannot be achieved by these dead parts who can’t move by themselves, who can’t think, who can’t organize themselves. So if this debate goes on, what would be your judgment on that? The argument is exactly the same. If a plane was created, who created the man who, or thing, they don’t know the man, who created that man, so ultimately you’ll have to believe that eternity is a must. Something will have to be accepted as eternal. That being can be either conscious or unconscious, because unconscious beings cannot organize themselves into highly developed phenomena.
So the eternal being has to be a conscious being. Yes, please, yes, I can see shadows coming on your face. Ask the question. When I started off the question, I accepted the fact that there is God. You have very kindly explained about the existence of God, the argument behind the existence of a conscious being, conscious eternal being. But the question that was asked was, is it possible then, if there is a conscious eternal being, for that being to have been in existence, there must have been something before that to have been in existence. No, eternity doesn’t require before.
This is why I said, you must begin with eternity, the concept of eternity, unless you understand that, the discussion cannot take place, cannot start a step in any direction. The fact is that you first of all understand that there has to be something eternal, because things there are. We see things, and because we know that out of nothingness, out of itself, nothing can be born. But Azul, if a conscious being can come out of nothingness, then surely… No, no, it didn’t come.
Eternity means it didn’t come. No, but if something can become eternal, I mean, for something to become eternal… This is a ring. You understand? Now, you can’t say where it started and where it ended. It is a continuous set. So eternity is like that, like a circle, which is continuous. There is no start of eternity. Because wherever you make the start, it ceases to be eternity. Wherever you cut the eternity, there will become two eternities, a sort of eternity will be born out of that. Fix any time, and the time after will be exactly equal to the time before. So the time before has no end, nor has the time after any end. Look backwards from your own time here, and you can’t reach a point where you can say that eternity started.
So eternity means not coming into being. It has to be like that, otherwise you can’t conceive of anything. Suppose, I mean, to make things better understood for those who do not believe, but who believe in reality, that is what they call reality, materialism, they have to accept that this matter is eternal. Haven’t they? There is no way out.
So eternity is not in question at all. If matter can be eternal, why a conscious being cannot be eternal? The same objection is raised against both, equally. So both have to be nullified with each other. We come back to the same philosophical question we have here. If you can have eternity that has no ending and no beginning, in the same way an ordered organization, an organization which exists, an organization which exists can also come into being and have… No, no, coming into being is not eternity. No, I mean, what I’m trying to explain is, eternity has no beginning or no ending. It is possible that organization can have no beginning. That’s possible, I agree. Fully agree. It is possible that a highly organized thing, most complicated that you can conceive or even can’t conceive, that is eternal. That is possible. But then there won’t be any steps of creation.
Eternity negates that. If every organization that you find has steps before it, that organization cannot be eternal. You follow that point? Organization can be eternal, of course. Why not? But if all the organization known to you, organized form known to you, is not eternal positively because it has a lower step, and a step lower, and a step lower, and it is an act of creation that we find it, then how can you call it eternal?
