The Universe

The universe is the body of God. He has embodied himself in the creation. To understand the divine principle on which the universe rests, you can begin by considering the vast size of the universe. The moon is hundreds of thousands of miles away from the earth. The sun is many tens of millions of miles away. Even the nearest of stars is millions upon millions of miles away; and beyond that, in the furthest reaches of the visible universe, there are stars that are still billions of times further away. But, all of this, which constitutes the physical universe, and which to our limited view is so infinitely vast, is only the minutest part of the subtle universe. Compared to this subtle universe, the whole grand physical universe is no more than the size of an atom.

The subtle universe, which is so indescribably huge when compared to the physical universe, is itself only a microscopic part of a much, much vaster aspect of the universe, which can be described as the causal universe. It is known as the causal universe because it is out of this finest aspect that the gross and subtle worlds arise. All of these three worlds, the physical, the subtle (or mental), and the causal, are so enormously big, the scriptures have declared that they cannot possibly be understood by the human mind or depicted in words. They are beyond the imagination, beyond the ability of the mind to grasp. And yet beyond all these, transcending the gross, the subtle and the causal, is the divine principle, the ultimate cause of all.