creation and Evolution - Part 5 - Emanation

Will vs. Desire

At this point it is important to make a distinction between will and desire. A desire may be either conscious or unconscious; but will implies a conscious act. Desire implies an urge, a drive, which may or may not be voluntary. At the point where creation begins, we may postulate a single unitary Mind, which is conscious of nothing but Itself, and which within Itself has no differentiations or structure; nothing of what we would describe as form. Without form there is no distinction, and without disctinction there is nothing to serve as a focus for awareness. We cannot be conscious without being conscious OF something.

Creation from this point forward may be of two kinds; it may flow from desire, or it may be the product of some random fluctuation. Ceretainly the mathematics of chaos theory indicates that uniformity or invariability cannot persist without being stirred, leading to a division of matter and energy. We know of no mechanism by which random fluctuation would produce the sort of complexity we are familiar with – therefore it is normally agreed that creation began as a nonrandom act.

So we now come down to the concept of emanation – the notion of initial creation as an unconscious action, though fuelled by desire – in this case the pressure for greater expression; the desire to be more. This is the same impulse which the seed uses to sprout and begin to form a plant. It is innate within the seed, and is thus not an act of will on the part of the seed. By the nature of the seed, it sprouts and grows. By the nature of the Creator, it Creates through establishment of form, within Itself, by Itself. And the form thus created permits the awakening of Self-awareness, by creating many within the body of the One.

We have a clue to this in the origins of the very word "desire", which is of French origin as "De Sire", meaning "of the Father."

Hence Jesus, speaking as one with God, was able to say, “This is my body” as he broke the substance of the bread. All things are formed within the body and substance of God, as there is no other substance. If there were, it would need a creator, existing prior to that which we have defined as the original creator. He is, I suggest, speaking not of his particular personal body, but of the larger body of Spiritual Substance, of which we all are a part. It is ALL our body.

So the notion of emanation does hold some validity for that first instant of creation, that moment which Genesis refers to a separation of ‘The waters from the waters’, which is Spirit separating Itself from Itself in order to experience Itself; in order to express Its potential just as the seed must break open and grow into the oak to be be fully expressed.

There were many other types of emanation concepts in history which fall short of explaining the act of creation as we might view it. For example:

The Vedic Upanishads hint at the idea of emanation, thus:

"From this Atman originated space, and from space the wind, and from the wind the fire, and from fire water, and from water the earth, and from the earth plants, and from plants food, and from food the seed of man, and from the seed of man himself."

In the religion of ancient Greece, emanations are thought to flow from objects in the world, to account for our sensory perception of them. In the absence of a modern theory of light, it was thought that we see by the reception of emanations from the things around us. As the Greeks evolved early atomic theory, they felt that objects must give off atoms. Of course now we know that we observe things by reflected light.

Such aspects of thought and emotion such as wisdom, love and anger were often partially personified and regarded as emanations of a sort, as lesser Gods which influenced humankind. Though today it may seem silly to us, It is no more sillier to personify love (as goddess Aphrodite) or anger (as the god Mars) than it is to personify evil as many do today.

Emanation was not apparently part of Egyptian belief, and though some Romans referred to the soul as an emanation of God, they considered it to be part of God, not spun off and diminished in quality.

The Emanation concept appears more strongly in early Christian thought, and in the Neoplatonist philosophies. In the Gnostic teachings of Basilides and Valentinus, emanation was foremost. Each successive emanation was referred to as an eon, and these eons were given off in stages from a Source which Itself was uncreated. The emanation was an unconscious act, by a law of nature; something the Creator couldn’t help, and the Creator lost nothing of Its completeness in the process. The Unity becomes the source of the plurality.

Early Christian thinkers used the concept in relation of the Son and Holy Spirit to the Father, and so the idea of emanation is part of the foundation of the Trinity concept. The part which was added later in Christian philosophy is the concept of a descent into imperfection, which is not present in the original writings. Early writers such as Athenagoras, Origen, and Arnobius- Tertullian borrowed from Valentinus, while repudiating one idea – that the ‘eons’ were separated from the ‘Nous’ or intellect, which was the origin of creation.

Though Valentinus (not the same at St. Valentine, a Roman priest) was among the most influential early church leaders, When he failed to be chosen Pope, it signaled the beginning of a purge of Gnostic thinkers which altered forever the direction of Christianity.