The world… Let us attempt to define it! The Greeks speak of the cosmos, which means ornament and order; on this basis the world is the ordered universe. The standard model of today's science calls the universe a set made up of three-layered groups of leptons and quarks. Others see it as the object and subject of the all-embracing dynamics of expansion, in the light of the expanding cosmos. In general terms, the universe taken as the cosmos is interstellar space and all that it contains; taken as a philosophical category, it is everything that exists as an ordered whole, and chaos too.
For Plato the world is a spherical system of spheres; for Bergson it is an ultimate totality, driven by the élan vital, which never exhausts new possibilities. Heraclitus is sceptical: even the most beautiful universe is nothing but a heap of dust piled up at random. Kant claims that the world is the illegitimate offspring of a metaphysical longing that torments the intellect, while Paul Valéry sees it as a stain fallen on the purity of non-existence. The sages of India interpret the material world as a reflection of the original spiritual medium.
… is, … How can the existence of the world be proved? Man is filled with the fear of cosmic orphanhood, and he cannot establish whether anything at all exists or not, himself included. This is why he tries to find explanations for the existence of the world – in science, mythology, aesthetics and who knows how many other fields. And yet it is enough to look up at the starry sky, or to notice our fellow human beings, and at once we find ourselves in a marvellous universe. Plotinus, a pearl among philosophers, writes of the existence and origin of the world: ‘Just think of a spring that has no other origin, and that gives itself to all the rivers, yet is not exhausted by this, but remains in its own constancy and repose.’ Against this poetic image, scientists offer mind-boggling explanations: ‘… Any system with precisely zero net energy can appear out of nothing and exist for ever.’ (E. P. Tryon) And Stephen Hawking goes so far as to say that from the vacuum currents near the event horizon of black holes new matter is created.
On the existence of the universe, Niels Bohr says: ‘A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also true.’ On this both traditional religious thought and the brooding rational mind founder. And yet the Upanishads declare: ‘Brahman is not existent and not non-existent, neither the one nor the other, nor a mixture of the two.’ Well then, there is no quantum world, there is only an abstract quantum-physical description. That is, in physics the universe is only a hypothetical state, whereas in metaphysical enlightenment it is a permanent experience, a practical medium.
… but transient. If we discover the cause of the world and regard that cause as eternal and real, and if a real cause can produce only a real effect, then the effect too is real, that is, the world is real. But then where does transience come from? Heraclitus likens the universe to the phoenix, which burns up when its development is complete, but from the fire a new world arises. At certain intervals the material world manifests and then becomes unmanifest, but only these phases change, while the material world itself, as a principle, endures. The cycle of manifestation–annihilation goes on without end, and so primal nature is transient in its eternity, eternal in its transience.
Even in its pulsing state the cosmos is an imprint: it bears the print of its maker's hand and counterpoints it as its mirror image, and so makes the secret of the universe intelligible, discoverable. Nature is an open book, the possibility of decoding the divine secret. It is both identical with its primal image and different from it. Relative material reality, which can also be grasped through experience, is defined by the dimensions of space, time and causality, and this is a special field of eternal divine creation, one that functions within limits. So you need only decide whether the world speaks of you, or speaks to you?