Parvati asked,
"From where is creation manifested Oh Lord, and how does it dissolve? What is knowledge of absolute which is devoid of creation and dissolution?"
Iswara replied,
"Creation comes from unmanifest and dissolves into unmanifest. Knowledge of the absolute is also unmanifest devoid of creation and dissolution."
JnanaSankalini 2, 3
The views about creation are multidimensional and often not free from controversies and contradictions. The most ancient scriptures the Vedas in general and the Upanishads in particular, explain elaborately the creation and its evolution.
Parvati, the sincere seeker, the inner quest in each person, asks the questions:
How does creation begin?
How does this creation come to an end?
How (in this creation) is knowledge of Brahman (eternal wisdom), which is beyond creation and dissolution, achieved?
Every creation is the vibration of the cosmic energy. Every beginning has an end. Every creation has dissolution. Dissolution is a perfect disappearance, i.e., to go beyond the vibratory creative energy to get merged in the supreme.
brahmajnana is Knowledge of the Absolute.
Spiritual wisdom is gained through sincere effort. Truth is revealed to a sincere seeker, who disciplines the senses and cleans the mind through meditation and prayer. This is called as the manifestation of the Divinity, revelation of Truth and light, gaining of inner experience. This knowledge brings liberation.
In the Bhagavad Gita the Lord speaks about this knowledge:
"It is that, on gaining which the person thinks that there is no greater gain beyond it, wherein established one is not moved by the greatest sorrow". Gita VI: 22
Such knowledge dispels ignorance and makes one free from the bondage of birth, death, pleasure and pain. This is the state of pure mind, a state of equilibrium and equanimity that is achieved through the path of self-discipline.
Lord Shiva answers these questions in detail. Creation comes from unmanifest and dissolves into unmanifest. Unmanifest is the knowledge of the absolute devoid of creation and dissolution.
Some say God is formless and some say God has form. In the Vedic experience, God as brahman is beyond all attributes and qualities, formless and beyond creation, while Ishwara is the manifested God perceived in the creation. Ishwara, the Lord is the supreme soul, here represented as Shiva.
In the Gita the Lord spoke:
"Beings are unmanifest in the beginning, manifest in the middle and unmanifest again at the end." Gita II: 28
This is a beautiful message in the Bhagavad-Gita, that for every creation there is an unmanifested and from the unmanifested, it becomes manifested. For example, when we see a river, which is manifested, it comes from the unmanifested. It means we do not know from where it is coming. Where is the source of water? If we think of a river and compare it with our life, our life comes from some unknown, unmanifested source - which people call as God. Our life has sprung from God because we don't know from where it came. When it becomes manifested, slowly we understand our life, our feelings and our emotions but we can know it only up to a point, not beyond that or not before that.
Elsewhere in the Gita the Lord explains
"Great Brahma is my womb. In that I cast the seed and from it, is the birth of all beings." Gita IV-3
Unmanifest is the source from which creation starts and then dissolves. To understand the principle of creation and dissolution, let us look at another practical example. A goldsmith with the help of instruments makes ornaments of many forms and names from gold, which are beautiful, useful and valuable. It is a part of the creation. When the ornament becomes old or outdated, then the goldsmith melts it back into gold. This is dissolution.
According to the Vedas every creation is the result of two factors or causes known in Vedic language as:
Efficient cause (skill, talent involved in creation) and the material cause -(instruments as well as other material involved in shaping an object).
In the human creation, these two factors are apparently different, but in Divine creation, both these are one and the same. In the Mundaka Upanisad (1/1/7), the process of creation is explained by the example of the spider and its web. A spider's web is a very fine net like structure, which it spins from its own saliva. The spider sports, lives and enjoys it and sometimes, the spider rolls up the cobweb into a ball and swallows it again. The spider creates, maintains and at the end destroys and devours the web of its own creation. Here the spider is the efficient as well as the material cause of its creation.
God is the creator and the omnipresent God is also the material for creation. The creative aspect of God is the avyakta the unmanifest. Whatever is apparently created, in any name or form, is nothing but God's manifestation alone, from formless to form and again into formless. Therefore the Upanishad declares - everything is brahman.
The waves and the ocean is a beautiful example. All waves are born in the ocean, live in it and at the end merge in the ocean. In reality, it is ocean alone that exists; likewise, the creation starts in unmanifest and gets back to unmanifest state.
Human life is an intermediate play of the manifest. But in the substratum of life, there is a continuous flow of the formless. The knowledge of unmanifest is the knowledge of the Self. Each creation is body and soul together. Body has a beginning and an end, but the soul is immortal. Through meditation one experiences the self, and self-knowledge dawns to the person. Self-knowledge dispels all ignorance and fear. It is the direct experience of Truth - transcendental experience.
Life is the mystery, but one who unveils the mystery of life is a free person, devoid of fear of birth and death, because of the experience of immortality. From the manifest point of view, there is creation and dissolution, but for unmanifest there is no change at all. For the ornament, there is a beginning and end, but, for the gold, it is always the same, in whatever ornament, it may be present.