The Origin of Life

The Origin of Life

   On the one hand, we have the scriptures that boldly state how the supreme Lord only manifests as the multifarious phenomenal objective world and the Bhagavad-Gita where the Bhagavan speaks has many verses how the elements are created by His 'yogamaya'. The prakruti ashtadha are the earth, water, fire, air, air and space (pancha bhuta) and the ind (manas), Intellect (buddhi) and ego (ahankara). All the living beings also incorporate these!It may be surprising to note the divine aspect of these elements eulogized in the scriptures. We will be surprised if the air is also called vayudeva, pranadeva, or Vayuputra (vatatmaja) Hanuma or Anjani tanaya (Anjaneya)life force and that is nothing but Oxygen; so also, water is nothing but Hydrogen and Oxygen. Mere joining of these gaseous elements will not become the liquid! the Lord enters it! tat srushtva tateva anupravishat! The Lord is catalyst! so also, when we say the prayers to the Sun God as Aditya, Bhaskara, Vibhakara, Surya, etc. little do we think of Hydrogen and Helium, the gaseous elements that compose the Sun! The electromagnetic waves, light, heat, actinic rays, etc. are all considered devata in the scriptures. As regards, life forms, the supreme Lord manifests Himself as the diverse names, forms and functions of all that we see! A little soil, water and heat generates the primordial forms of life! We see how snails and earthworms appear soon after rains! A little carbon added to these make the appearance of vegetation and the primordial forms plant and animals are indistinguishable, indiscernable! Mosses and lichens, algae etc are wonderful! H+C+O rule the roost? Hydrocarbons and carbo hydrates, oxidation and reduction process of Oxygen are simple wonderful! The human cell made of amino acids, ribose, DNA, genes, chromosomes, proteins and harmonies, together with the inherent power of creation, transformation, mutation, knowledge, technology, and such other invisible forces (attributed to Vishnu/chit/ consciousness) make a very interesting study. All the elements like gold, silver, plutonium, are, of course, the products that manifest, appear, come out of emissions, the emanates, from the neutron stars and, the fusion and fission and explosion of the binaries?   

    Zecharia Sitchin and many other writers have assembled extensive evidence that Earth has been visited in ancient times by life from another planet that still orbits our sun, currently at the edge of our solar system in a long 3600-year elliptical orbit. The recent History Channel Ancient Alien Series shows archaeological evidence for this theory.

  The story that emerges from the evidence is that humans descended from these alien beings about 200,000 years ago in Africa. The complexity and similarity of archaeological remains around the world suggests that our alien ancestors assisted directly with the development of civilization worldwide.

  Even stranger, the archaeological record includes human skeletons and artifacts in deposits dated during the last 600 million years that multi-cell life existed on Earth. The biodiversity of species shows that large and relatively sudden numbers of species appeared about every 60 million years, always following Earth’s major life extinctions, which occur after our major cataclysms involving earthquakes, volcanoes, ice ages and floods. The ancient human remains suggest that our ancient ancestors first sent, and later accompanied, spacecraft to Earth with samples of life from their planet. Most of the evolution of life may have occurred on our mother planet.

     This creation myth, like many others, tries to answer the questions we all ask. Why are we here? Where did we come from? The answer generally given was that humans were of comparatively recent origin, because it must have been obvious, even at early times that the human race was improving in knowledge and technology. So it can't have been around that long, or it would have progressed even more. For example, according to Bishop Usher, the Book of Genesis placed the creation of the world at 9 in the morning on 27 October, 4,004 BC. On the other hand, the physical surroundings, like mountains and rivers, change very little in a human lifetime. They were, therefore thought to be a constant background, and either to have existed forever as an empty landscape, or to have been created at the same time as the humans. Not everyone, however, was happy with the idea that the universe had a beginning.

    For example, Aristotle, the most famous of the Greek philosophers, believed the universe had existed forever. Something eternal is more perfect than something created. He suggested the reason we see progress was that floods, or other natural disasters, had repeatedly set civilization back to the beginning. The motivation for believing in an eternal universe was the desire to avoid invoking divine intervention to create the universe and set it going. Conversely, those who believed the universe had a beginning, used it as an argument for the existence of God as the first cause, or prime mover, of the universe.

    If one believed that the universe had a beginning, the obvious question was what happened before the beginning? What was God doing before He made the world? Was He preparing Hell for people who asked such questions? The problem of whether or not the universe had a beginning was a great concern to the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. He felt there were logical contradictions, or antimonies, either way. If the universe had a beginning, why did it wait an infinite time before it began? He called that the thesis. On the other hand, if the universe had existed for ever, why did it take an infinite time to reach the present stage? He called that the antithesis. Both the thesis and the antithesis depended on Kant's assumption, along with almost everyone else, that time was Absolute. That is to say, it went from the infinite past to the infinite future, independently of any universe that might or might not exist in this background. This is still the picture in the mind of many scientists today.