As per scientists, the world began 13 billion years ago with the Big Bang. Earth came into being about 5 billion years ago. And about 4 billion years ago, life emerged on Earth. What we mean by ‘life’ is the appearance of sentience, the appearance of organisms, who can ‘sense’ the world around them. In other words, the appearance of a mind. So, from a scientific point of view, matter comes first, then mind; the world comes first, then life; the world of physics precedes the world of biology.
In Puranic metaphor, the mind is male and the matter is female. The world begins when Vishnu ‘wakes’ up. Thus, creation does not mean the creation of the material world, but the awareness of the material world by the mind. This Hindu story of creation is very different from the biblical concept of creation, in which God creates the world in six days, with life on the third day. Creation in Hinduism is psychological, not physical; it is about awareness of matter not the appearance of matter.
The earliest organisms to appear are focused on survival and do not ‘see’ the world as it is, but only as an opportunity (food, mate) or as a threat (predator, rival). Even plants and animals do not reflect on the nature of the world. This starts only with humans. In Hindu mythology, this is explained as Brahma emerging from the lotus flower, frightened, lonely, unable to make sense of the world. He ‘sees’ a woman, who he claims to be his creation, so his daughter, and seeks to possess and control her, an act for which he is beheaded by Shiva. Brahma’s desire thus sets forth in motion the cycle of life: he becomes creator, and Shiva, who stops his desire, becomes a destroyer. This again is not the creation or destruction of the world, but creation and destruction of ‘desire’ or ‘hunger’, the forces that propel life. Brahma creates life, not the world, by submitting to desire; Shiva destroys life by destroying desire. Brahma is a bhogi, Shiva is a yogi.
If Brahma is a householder who seeks a wife, and Shiva is a hermit who rejects marriage, then Vishnu is the hermit-householder, living in a household without getting attached to anything.
Devdutt Pattanaik is an Indian physician turned leadership consultant, mythologist, author and communicator whose works focus largely on the areas of myth, religion, mythology, and management.
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