First cause?

[Jeremiahcp]

Thanks for your post Jeremiah.. I'm glad you've also seen the light... The "sun" is used as an analogy to explain that the creation is an emanation from God..as light emanates from the sun:


"Creation is an emanation from the creator. It is impossible that the eternal should become limited. A tree never becomes a creature: it never acquires sight nor smell; yet both are creations of God - creations in emanation. Creation is like the sunlight; God is the sun."

~ Abdu'l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 107

Another expression of the topic can be found in the words below:

The One is not all things, but before all things. Emanation is the process by which all things are derived from the One. The infinite goodness and perfection "overflows", and, while remaining within itself and losing nothing of its own perfection, it generates other beings, sending them forth from its own superabundance. Or again, as brightness is produced by the rays of the sun so everything is a radiation (perilampsis) from the Infinite Light...

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Emanationism

"The "sun" is used as an analogy to explain that the creation is an emanation from God..as light emanates from the sun:"

I understood your analogy but apparently you did not understand my post.

 

[sealchan]

But there is no real separation between the reality represented by the term 'God' and the term 'Nature', except in a mind that differentiates the unity into "the one into two, then the three, and then the ten thousand things" *.

There can be no absolute first cause because there was never a beginning to the cycles of creation, concepts like creation, preservation, and destruction, are only relevant to the manifested forms of the universe as observed by a conceptualizing mind, but in essence they are only apparent aspects of the one eternal existence.

*Tao Teh Ching

Sure you can say such things if you are wanting to "transcend" the conversation...but I and others are wanting to engage in the conversation. There is a need to directly confront confusion and using the rational, categorical mind is often the most effective way to start with someone who doesn't even know what mind they are using!

If they can be gently led into realizing the failure to be able to distinguish the creator from the created in their own mind, then, perhaps, they will be ready to accept that such difficulties are to be expected. But first they must try to define the separation they so earnestly and unconsciously assume IMO.

 

[sealchan]

If by first cause you mean the " prime mover ", I have always that interesting in the face of FLRW cosmology

All energy was squashed into a small volume of incredible density, which is the leading theory these days, iirc, of the initial state of the universe

The only way anything would move is outward ( expansion ) at least as far as I understand Susskind's lectures

.. yet the esoteric interpretation of the beginning of the universe according to rabbis ( some ) is that God had to contract to create room to make the universe, as God was all that existed at that point ( literally, a point )

But bringing a lone solitary God into it again just begs one to note that without anybody or anything else around....

.....how do you know you exist ?

If I were a lone solitary point of energy, I might decide to try and create something that will ultimately prove I am real

Because that would bug me, not knowing

I was inspired to rewrite the Genesis story of the creation of the Universe and I came to the insight that God would have precisely this problem and that it would likely be a motivating one for how He went about creating the Universe.

Not knowing that He truly existed His creation would all be motivated by a desire to prove to Himself that He truly existed. In the end He discovered that it was better to create in a way that allowed each thing He created to co-exist and thereby become a gradually increasing work of mutual self-attestation. Also He discovers a voice of something/someone that He did not create...basically His own feminine self which He unknowingly divided off from His original nature in order to be self-conscious. In this way I came to realize that whatever God was in All it was/is necessary to fragment that wholeness to even contemplate it.

I also discovered a way back in for God's feminine nature and, in fact, I could better see the surgical removal that the authors of Genesis had done originally to have her removed.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Sure you can say such things if you are wanting to "transcend" the conversation...but I and others are wanting to engage in the conversation. There is a need to directly confront confusion and using the rational, categorical mind is often the most effective way to start with someone who doesn't even know what mind they are using!

If they can be gently led into realizing the failure to be able to distinguish the creator from the created in their own mind, then, perhaps, they will be ready to accept that such difficulties are to be expected. But first they must try to define the separation they so earnestly and unconsciously assume IMO.

Most certainly, like all educational instruction, prerequisite understanding is essential for further unfoldment....Master..