Cosmology in Hinduism (Basics)

You’re going to understand why God created us & what’s our meaning in 90 seconds.

We have different POVs to it like Dvait, Advait or Vaishnavism schools but the most basic, dummy way to think about this is to imagine you’re building a swimming pool inside an ocean. Just because you put a circle net inside a large body of water, doesn’t mean you created the pool right?

So similarly, our Sanatan Dharma says that technically the software which is the 3 gunas as well as the hardware which are the 5 elements or mahabhutas needed to create, along with the creations which is us, have always existed in an unbound ocean.

God, who has always existed & sits above the graph of time & space, simply organizes & destroys this pool we call the universe over & over again to give our asleep individual souls or atman, which are his own parts, a field to do our thing & possibly understand Him.

So this world is an expression of the Highest Reality, his dream or manifested, activated, or agitated state - with or without purpose is debatable.

But the idea that He sat in a lab & mixed chemicals to make us is a Western POV because time in Hinduism is cyclical & infinite, which means there’s actually no start or end to our story, so creation also can’t exist, except the one we think of, because of our illusion or maya.

But God has given our souls free will so that we can work to realise all of this through our own karma or actions. This kinda explains that evil criminals exist not because God made them but they’re part of the infinite possibilities & their past karma must’ve created the conditions for evil.

Basically, the reason we exist is to try & understand God through a route of our choice called the yogas like bhakti, dyana, dhyana & karma - now what are these yogas?