If that creative energy which is working all around us, day and night, stops for a second, the whole thing falls to the ground. There never was a time when that energy did not work throughout the universe, but there is the law of cycles, pralaya, our Sanskrit word for creation. For the word creation in the English language has unhappily got that fearful, the most crude idea of something coming out of nothing, creation of nonentity, nonexistence becoming existence, which of course, I would not insult you by asking you to believe. Our word, therefore, is projection. The whole of this nature exists, it becomes finer, subsides; and then after a period of rest, as it were, the whole thing is again projected forward, and the same combination, the same evolution, the same manifestations appear and remain playing, as it were, for a certain time, only again to break into pieces, to become finer and finer, until the whole thing subsides, and again comes out. Thus it goes on backward and forward with a wavelike motion throughout eternity. Time, space, and causation are all within this nature. To say, therefore, that it had a beginning is utter nonsense. No question can occur as to its beginnings or its end. Therefore wherever in our scriptures the words “beginning” and “end” are used, you must remember that it means the beginning and end of one particular cycle, no more than that.
- Vivekananda
