How was the universe created? Conventional science would have us believe that it started with what they call the “Big Bang” about 14 billion years ago. According to this theory, our entire existence suddenly exploded into being out of one very tiny speck of matter. What began as just a theory has gradually hardened into scientific dogma that most people accept without thinking, but something about it just doesn’t seem quite right. Believing that our entire universe accidentally arose from a bit of dust goes against one’s common sense. Of course common sense can be wrong – as when ancient people believed that the sun revolved around the Earth – but that doesn’t mean that all common sense is nonsense. Our universe is vast and boundless with billions of stars and planets, so it is very difficult to believe that all of this resulted from the random explosion of one pinpoint of mindless matter. In fact, looking at the finely-tuned mechanisms of the Big Bang provides very convincing evidence that the birth of our material world was much more than just a happy accident.

Can you conceive of something being accurate to one billionth of a second? This is what our scientists say was necessary for the universe to form as it did. If the rate of expansion had been one billionth of a second slower or faster, the universe as we know it could not possibly exist. Mathematician and physicist Fred Hoyle likened the possibility of the world randomly emerging out of the Big Bang to the chances of a hurricane passing through a junkyard and constructing an airplane out of the whirling mass of the parts. The closer you look, the more it seems likely that our universe arose through a process that had to be well organized and filled with intention, so how do we explain this?

Traditional cultures believed that some form of deity was the moving force in creation. However, with the rise of science in the 17th century those old beliefs came into question causing a great debate between creationists and scientific materialists - a debate that continues to this day. Basically, the creationists believe that there is an all-powerful god that is responsible for everything in the universe. On the other side is material science which tells us that the universe can only be understood through knowledge of its physical parts. In other words, they believe that matter is all that matters. Neither of these viewpoints is complete because they each look at the world through the blinders of a limited perspective. But the universe is not so easily categorized; it is neither totally ethereal nor exclusively material... it is both. Perhaps we can reach a better of understanding of how our world came into being by integrating these two concepts.

To see how this works let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that the Big Bang theory is accurate. This assumption still leaves us with one very simple question: What existed before this grand explosion? If the entire material universe started with a Big Bang, then there must have been some kind immaterial existence prior to that. From this immaterial source (No-thing) was created the entire material universe (Every-thing). How did this happen? Conventional scientists do not have a good answer for that question, but some of their more adventurous colleagues just might. The Italian physicist Paola Zizzi has developed a theory called the “Big Wow” which proposes that we are not the result of a random material process, but of something that was more like a “thought”. She envisions a “Field of intelligent consciousness” that created an “idea” of our universe. This “idea” was infused with the information that allowed it to take on physical form.

Could this “Field of Consciousness” be what religions call God? Or maybe Elon Musk has the answer. He and others think that “intelligent consciousness” is an advanced civilization that created our world as a form of virtual reality. But there is another more hopeful possibility. This “Field of Consciousness” is very similar to what mystics and sages have spoken of throughout history as “Oneness”. In recent years the leading edge of science has begun to explore this ancient concept. What they have discovered so far suggests that we are all connected to everything in the universe through a field of conscious energy. That means whatever affects one thing also affects everything else... whatever affects me affects you. The implications of these discoveries are enormous, because they open our minds to new ways of thinking and being. Knowing that we are all connected to each other, and to the very source of the universe, makes us aware that we are part of an awesome and infinite creative process. Embracing this role as co-creators can empower us to write a new story of humanity… a story that will lead us to a more beautiful world… and a new beginning.