How Universe has No beginning?

Question

• Universe has No end can be understood but No beginning cannot be understood

• There should be a definite point that the Lord Started this process and it should work forever.

• Anything cannot start itself and run forever and the universe must be started or created only by god.
  

Question :

• In normal time souls are born in animals for Bad Deeds but in the beginning on waht basis were souls in animals were put ?
• What basis were the souls were put on the Manu,Raksahas,Gandharvas,Human Beings,and animal on the Beginning of the universe?
  

Answer 1

Vedas say time is cyclic. So, there is no first creation.

Even we can comprehend it logically. If we assume there was first creation of Universe and other living beings (jivas), why some Atmans aquired status of Devas and why some Atmans took birth as humans and Rakshasas during very first birth? Even in Humans, why some Atmans were born as Brahmanas and why some Atmans were Sudras for the first time? This selection can't be random as it violates Law of Karma of Vedas. So, there must be no first birth or first creation to apply law of Karma properly. Our Atman and Supreme Brahman are eternal and Universe is undergoing creation, preservation and destruction since eternity.

In the book Spiritual heritage of India, Swami Prabhavananda says

To the Hindu, creation is beginningless and endless. That it is beginningless he proves by a simple process of logic. If creation had a beginning, then must the creator also have had a beginning, since until there is a creation there can be no creator; but to admit that the creator had a beginning would be to admit that God had a beginning, since God is not God until he creates—and to think of God as having had a beginning would, to the Hindu, be a manifest absurdity. God, who contains within himself the seed, the material cause, of the universe, first brings forth the universe out of his own being, and then in due time takes it back again to himself. This process of creation and dissolution goes on for ever and ever, for it is as endless as it is beginningless. Eternity is witness, not of one universe only—that, for example, of which we are now a part—but of an infinite succession of universes. The birth, life, and destruction of a universe constitutes a cycle. To say that there was never a first cycle, and will never be a last, is only a way of affirming that the creative function of God is, like himself, eternal.

Also, Swami Vivekananda says the following in his complete works.

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honour them as perfected beings. I am glad to tell thisaudience that some of the very greatest of them were women. Here it may be said that these laws as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or end. Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound, and everything compound must undergo that change which is called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore there never was a time when there was no creation.

So, Lord is eternal and as Supreme God is eternal, the process of creation, preservation and destruction is happening since eternity.

Adi Shankara says that process of Creation, Preservation and destruction is just an apparent manifestation, as discussed by Swami Vishwananda in this answer.

In normal time souls are born in animals for Bad Deeds but in the beginning on what basis were souls in animals were put ?

Atmans aquire bodies in this cycle of creation based on their respective karma of previous cycles. Since there is no first cycle of creation, you can apply this logic to all cycles.

For example, those who perform 100 Aswamedha Yajnas become Indra. So, a king or Kshatriya of previous cycle who performed 100 Aswamedha Yajnas in last Manvantara becomes Indra for first Manvantara of first kalpa in the present cycle.

Answer 2

There are two verses about the universe in the Gita which state the manifestation and de-manifestation of it and the Jivas.

At the dawn of the day of Brahma this whole universe comes into manifestation from the Unmanifest (Prakrti). When the night begins, it dissolves in that Unmanifest itself.

Gita 8.18

O son of Prtha! This vast collectivity of beings comes inexorably into manifestation again and again, dissolving at the commencement of night, and again coming forth at the dawn of day.

Gita 8.19

Swami Tapasyananda explains the importance of denying the possibility of first creation as follows:

The principal feature of Vedantism and its first tenet is the cyclic view of time and mans's involvement in it. .... This state is called Samsara, the repititive process of life and death. There is no beginning for it, as its framework of Time is cyclic in movement. Matter (Prakriti) and souls (Jiva) are not created at any moment of Time, but are eternally present as dependent existences or as the body of the Supreme Being. ... They come into manifestation at the beginning of a cycle of Time, and at the end dissolve in Him, remaining in their causal conditions, only to come into manifestations again when the new cycle of Time starts after the earlier dissolution.

The Jiva undergoes countless embodiments until he evolves his inherent perfection as the Spirit. In Samsara, owing to the encrustation of Karma or tendencies accrued in earlier lives through one's own actions, that inherent divinity is shrunk and hidden, but never effaced or destroyed. The purpose of the creative cycle is to elicit this divine potentiality of the Spirit and bring it into higher and higher states of perfection. These repeated embodimenrs are the result of Karma or action in the earlier phases of the Jiva's involvement in Samsara. All actions done leave some tendencies on the mind, and also entitlement for enjoyments or suffering according to the nature of these actions. The accumulation of these effects acquired in births past is the Karma potential regulating the embodiments and experiences of the Jivas. This theory is essential for a conception of a just and righteous God. For, any theory accepting a first creation will have to attribute the responsibility for all suffering and evil to God. In the cyclic theory of creation, there is no first creation and hence no beginning for the Jiva. Therefore it has to be accepted that an original quantum of Karma goes with the very conception of Jiva, and to ask for a beginning for it is only to beg the question.

Swami Tapasyananda in his Introduction to 'A Primer of Hinduism' by D. S. Sarma

Answer 3

It is not correct to say that our ancient seers did not say beginning. Interested readers will go through Nasadiya Suktam of 10th Mandal , Suktam .129(Creation) of Rig-Veda:

1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

2. Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider. That One Thing(Brahma), breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

3. Darkness there was: at first concealed in dark new this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.

4. Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.

5. Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder

6. Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?

7. He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.