Note: This is not a scientific or spiritual article, though it occasionally cites either to ground the argument. It is an introspective inquiry independent of any particular discipline, tradition, or geography. I penned this in 2023, but have updated it after the Mind Body Consciousness Conference in IIT Mandi (India) in June 2026. I have also explored related themes in musical form in my Tamil composition, Karpanaiye kadavul.
The greatest philosophical, scientific and spiritual minds of our species across every civilization and every epoch, have kept returning to one question above all others: What is the Prime Mover of the Universe - the ultimate force that drives everything?
I. The Perennial Question
It is the question behind and beyond questions - the rest are just details, as Albert Einstein observed when he declared, “I want to know God's thoughts".1 More than a spiritual quest, this wish was a reflection of his desire to reach the bedrock principle from which every law, every phenomenon, every configuration of matter and energy ultimately issues.
Breathing Universe
If one were to go by most widely accepted scientific theories, the observable universe is expanding after the Big Bang. There are other theories like cosmic inflation pre-big bang and multiple big bangs in multiverses but what is relevant to this piece is that even in my pre-teen years, I could not blindly accept that the universe could perpetually flow only in one direction. There had to be a counter direction at some point sooner or later. I eventually discovered that several Indian philosophers had theorised millennia ago that universal contraction was the other side of the coin - when I came across the phrase "nikhila prapancha sankocha vikaasaam" in a well known musical composition, Veena pustaka dharineem of Muttuswami Dikshitar.
This cycle of Expansion and Contraction appears verily as if the entire cosmos is breathing. Of course, modern science is yet to conclusively prove this theory though some thinkers are slowly gravitating towards it. At the microcosmic level, human knowledge is also expanding but could soon get into a flow of contraction with over addiction to smart devices, social media and over-dependence on AI. But the similarity ends there.
The primary question is: What drives Cosmic Respiration?
To qualify as a Prime Mover, a principle must satisfy two essential criteria: (a) It must explain not just the 'how' of universal motion (mechanism) but the 'why' of its specific shapes, timing, and configurations. (b) It must account for the totality of existence, encompassing both positive and negative forces - creation and destruction, order and dissolution - rather than just a benign subset of reality.
From Ṛg Veda (Nasadīya Sūkta, 10.129)2 to Aristotle's Metaphysics3, ancient and modern thought leaders across civilizations have suggested several contenders. But as can be seen below, almost everyone of them falls short of being the prime movers of the everything known and unknown.
II. Fundamental but not Prime Movers
Consciousness: Consciousness is most often positioned as the deepest stratum of reality. In his Metaphysics Book XII, Aristotle stated that the universe requires an Unmoved Mover - a first principle of pure actuality that causes all motion not by pushing but by being the supreme object of desire and aspiration. He opined that this Prime Mover is static perfection: pure intellect contemplating itself (noesis noeseos), incapable of change or creativity. One may view this pure intellect as universal Consciousness - from which tiny amounts are distributed among all its components (including what we currently view as non-living matter). Erwin Schrödinger4 observed the irreducibility of consciousness, while Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff advanced the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) theory, proposing that quantum processes within the microtubules of neurons constitute the physical substrate of consciousness.5 Hameroff (whom I interacted with briefly at the 2026 IIT Mind Body Consciousness Conference) further opines that microtubule quantum state reduction generates the flow of time, positioning consciousness as a fundamental aspect of reality, not an epiphenomenon. Consciousness congresses are being held in various parts of the world to understand its all-reaching influence but most discussions are limited to consciousness experiments at the human scale - because that is the extent of scientific tools available currently. Notwithstanding our multi-millennia-old fascination with it, Consciousness appears to be more a universal witness (sarva-sākṣī, as Sanskrit scholars would label it) rather than an agent. It is primordial but is mostly untranslated potential and requires some force greater than itself to actualize it.
Most striking limitation: Consciousness only manifests itself in (what we consider) living forms - leaving a huge void where non-living objects are concerned. It is beyond our comprehension if what we consider non-living also possess consciousness. But clearly, they are not driven by a passive universal consciousness but by a principle far more dynamic.
Energy: The universal component and dynamic force. In various philosophical vocabularies the energy principle is named Shakti or Yang, both pointing to the same dynamic, kinetic pole of existence. Energy is responsible for all motion, transformation, and becoming. Yet both Consciousness (as potential) and Energy (as kinetic) require some higher organising principle to function harmoniously. Energy is the medium of change, not its author. It explains how the universe moves, not why it moves as it does - taking these shapes rather than those, at this moment rather than another.
Most striking limitation: Energy does not account for living and emotional factors that also drive the universe.
Truth, Love, Ethics, Fairness, Righteousness, Dharma etc: From romanticists and philosophers to poets and spiritualists, many have posited one or more of these to be the anchor on which the universe stands.
Most striking limitations: Their structural deficiency - a presumption of purely positive foundations as Prime Movers, not accounting for an equal measure of opposite negative forces that are essential to maintain balance.
The Divine: One or more of the Gods worshipped across the world’s religious traditions. Religious leaders from earliest recorded history have been deeply invested in their respective Gods leading to everything ranging from discussions and debates to battles and wars. Faith has played a huge role in shaping how our species has evolved. It has also led to innumerable positive acts and noble outpourings across cultures.
Most striking limitations: These traditions diverge so fundamentally on the form, character, and moral nature of the divine that no common description survives the comparison. Critics, including atheists, argue that faith is not proof and that divinities are merely psychological projections or social constructs. Even setting aside the philosophical critiques, any candidate for the Prime Mover must be demonstrably beyond the reach of any particular cultural or historical imagination. The one convergence across these traditions - and it is a crucial one - is the shared insistence that the ultimate principle cannot be a physical entity. That negative constraint points toward the correct answer, even if the traditions cannot agree on what that answer is.
III. The Accident, Questions & Laws
Much as I would like to claim that since each of the above contenders fell short in my reckoning in some critical respect or the other, I introspected ceaselessly for years before arriving at the most plausible phenomenon that can fit the bill as the Prime Mover of everything. However, the fact is that unlike great scientists and philosophers who are perpetually preoccupied with the quest to seek the ultimate truth, I was breezily getting on with my professional and personal commitments until the most plausible answer literally fell into my lap one fine day.
I realised that it was not Consciousness, Love, Truth etc that ruled the Cosmos. It was really Creativity which was the Prime Mover of the Universe. This perception flashed across my mind when I got an idea for an opening line of a new musical composition (which, by the way, has yet to see even its next phrase). My conviction got solidified after I woke up another day with what is globally considered a 'musical impossibility' - a composition in a 2-note scale almost fully formed in my head.
Insistent Questions
I got to wondering why that particular set of note combinations appeared in my head at that moment? To me, statements like that it is because of the random ways in which neurons light up inside one's brain at any given moment in the brain based on all prior data received was too simplistic - and frankly, a confession that one was unable to see a master plan, a master design and a mastermind behind this apparent randomness. Because the subject matter here was not just a typical thought or talk but an original idea, not explored before in that form until it arranged itself in my mind at that precise moment. The immediate next questions were:
- Where did this fragment of creativity originate from - was it from the vast cosmos or from inside my brain only?
- When did it come into existence - or was it there forever and I only happened to perceive it at a given moment?
- Where did it reside before its manifestations?
- Where would it go when it became unmanifest (in case I forgot that idea before documenting it)?
- Would my forgetting the idea really mean that it no longer exists or will it always continue to exist independent of its connection with its agent?
- Could it be weighed or measured in quantifiable scientific terms?
- Could experiments be designed that would determine its precise position, velocity or state?
- Would its behaviour be akin to a particle or a wave?
- Do characters and events that are the products of the creativity of writers, sculptors, painters etc exist, or not?
It soon became apparent to me that the impossibilities of finding the answers to these and innumerable other queries were not contingent limitations of our abilities or technology; they reflect something essential about the nature of Creativity. It neither occupies space nor is constrained by time, in any manner accessible to our present understanding. Or, it occupies all space and time, which is equally beyond our comprehension. However, the one thing that was immediately obvious was that the force responsible for sowing the seeds of my tiny creativity - and that of zillions of species across galaxies - was the ultimate mover of the universe. It is not to be confused with mere human level ingenuity, which Britannica defines creativity as “the ability to bring something new into existence”. Numerous neuroscientists study various mechanisms of creativity from this standpoint but that can only lead to localised perspectives.
In the macro context, I also noticed a couple of other fascinating aspects which can be best paraphrased as below:
Law of Conservation of Creativity: Creativity can never be destroyed. At best, it can be transformed from one idea to another or one phenomenon to another at the macro level.
Law of Self-Propagation of Creativity: Simply stated, Creativity begets itself. Even at a human level this is true as new ideas emerge from older ones. Extrapolating this to the cosmic level one can postulate that the same applies on an infinitely larger scale.
Law of Paradox Resolution: Creativity represents the point of infinity at both the subtlest of subtle and the most immense of immense levels where existence and non-existence, form and formlessness, local and non-local as also real and unreal blur into one.
Law of Moral Neutrality: Creativity is independent of personal morals and manifests through beings of noble disposition as well as through those with immense negativity. While the quality of Creativity's manifestation in a given being reflects the nature of that being and may serve as a reliable pointer to it, Creativity itself is not identical with goodness or virtue. It is a force, not a value.
IV. Immeasurable, Irrepressible
Like every genuine first principle, Creativity eludes the conceptual instruments ordinarily deployed to grasp and measure phenomena. One cannot determine its size, mass, state or position but its manifestations are perceivable through the senses - one can hear it in music, see it in the visual arts, feel it in the presence of a great teacher or in the intricate beauty of a natural system. But it exceeds every sensory modality through which it is approached. It manifests as whatever quality its medium (human, animal, plant etc) happens to possess; yet in itself it is beyond attributes. In short, Creativity is simultaneously source and force - designing and destroying, containing and sustaining, while transcending every manifestation it produces.
Another natural follow up question is: "Who or what is behind Universal Creativity?"
Introspection reveals that Universal Creativity is not the creativity of some other, prior entity. It is not Nature's creativity or products of our own Minds. It is Creativity itself - self-existent, self-directing, omnipresent and omnipotent. The question "Whose?" dissolves once we grasp that Creativity here denotes not a property predicated of some prior subject but the primordial subject itself. It is the cosmic ontological principle, prior to and generative of form, space, time, matter, energy, force and every law that science or philosophy has yet articulated.
Again the Nāsadīya Sūkta - which I am not an expert in - is relevant here. It declares: "Before existence and non-existence, there was ‘that one’ (tad ekam) - a pure undifferentiated potentiality that breathed without breath." The first cause it identifies is kāma: desire, creative impulse, the ‘first seed of mind.’ Objectively, it is a remarkable ancient convergence with the thesis I arrived at independently - the oldest surviving statement that a creative principle precedes both being and non-being. Almost a century ago, Alfred North Whitehead argued that Creativity - not Consciousness - is the ultimate metaphysical category by which the many become one6.
V. Creativity and Creation: A Critical Distinction
It is essential to highlight that Creativity must not be conflated with the act of creation, even at the cosmic scale. Earlier civilizations associated the creative principle with divine origination - with Brahma in the Hindu tradition, generative Word of the Biblical narrative in Genesis etc but these accounts - doubtless invaluable in religious contexts - tend to limit Creativity to only the initial act. In reality, Creativity's all reaching influence includes Creation, Conservation and Conversion. The word conversion is used here to highlight the fact that at the Cosmic scale, there is really nothing called destruction. There is only transformation, as subsequent sections will illustrate. This is in stark contrast with human scale operations of creation and destruction with various ethical ramifications. Creativity as the Prime Mover operates at every scale at every moment.
VI. The Ultimate Governor
Creativity is the ultimate legislator and executor of universal laws and phenomena.
Everything we attribute as natural constants or qualities are its mechanisations - speed of light, acoustic principles, innate mass of elements and states of matter.
At the quantum level, String Theory7 posits that the most fundamental constituents of reality are not particles but dancing, vibrating filaments within quarks; it is Creativity that determines the frequency and pattern of these which in turn determine the type of matter formed.
It directs the formation of galaxies and superclusters, black holes, naked singularities, expansions and absorptions.
While Einstein’s E=mc² explains the transformability of Matter and Energy8, it is Creativity that decides the timing and quality of these transformations. More profoundly, it brings into being the entire cascading hierarchy of systems - from the sub-microscopic to the super-galactic - within which matter and energy undergo their transformations.
It is Creativity which orchestrates the distribution of elements like Carbon (element 6 in the periodic table), Oxygen (8), Magnesium ( 12), Silver (47) and Gold (79) from distant stellar nurseries to regions ripe for complex chemistry such as our planet. Our own Sun is only producing Hydrogen (1) and Helium (2) currently and is projected to produce Iron (56) in its last stages.
At the biological level, Creativity governs the internal logic of metabolic pathways and cellular signaling. It actively provides the regulatory framework that allows these complex systems to self-organize, sustain their structural integrity and respond to environmental stimuli.
Mutations and DNA replications - which are responsible for the entire history of life's diversification - represent Creativity operating through the medium of the genome.
Phenomena beyond our grasp and perceived as 'random' such as the adaptive responses of bacteria and viruses to novel threats, the highly coordinated cellular responses to specific physiological situations are intricate manifestations of Creativity.
Manifestations through its own Creations: Even more remarkably, Creativity manifests itself through its creations. In the animal, bird, insect, and plant kingdoms, one finds creativity expressed at every level of biological organization: the architectural ingenuity of a spider’s web, the versatility of a mimic octopus, the geometric precision of a puffer fish's art, the navigational virtuosity of migratory birds like the Arctic Tern, to name a few.
Everything we attribute as natural constants or qualities are its mechanisations - speed of light, acoustic principles, innate mass of elements and states of matter.
At the quantum level, String Theory7 posits that the most fundamental constituents of reality are not particles but dancing, vibrating filaments within quarks; it is Creativity that determines the frequency and pattern of these which in turn determine the type of matter formed.
It directs the formation of galaxies and superclusters, black holes, naked singularities, expansions and absorptions.
While Einstein’s E=mc² explains the transformability of Matter and Energy8, it is Creativity that decides the timing and quality of these transformations. More profoundly, it brings into being the entire cascading hierarchy of systems - from the sub-microscopic to the super-galactic - within which matter and energy undergo their transformations.
It is Creativity which orchestrates the distribution of elements like Carbon (element 6 in the periodic table), Oxygen (8), Magnesium ( 12), Silver (47) and Gold (79) from distant stellar nurseries to regions ripe for complex chemistry such as our planet. Our own Sun is only producing Hydrogen (1) and Helium (2) currently and is projected to produce Iron (56) in its last stages.
At the biological level, Creativity governs the internal logic of metabolic pathways and cellular signaling. It actively provides the regulatory framework that allows these complex systems to self-organize, sustain their structural integrity and respond to environmental stimuli.
Mutations and DNA replications - which are responsible for the entire history of life's diversification - represent Creativity operating through the medium of the genome.
Phenomena beyond our grasp and perceived as 'random' such as the adaptive responses of bacteria and viruses to novel threats, the highly coordinated cellular responses to specific physiological situations are intricate manifestations of Creativity.
Manifestations through its own Creations: Even more remarkably, Creativity manifests itself through its creations. In the animal, bird, insect, and plant kingdoms, one finds creativity expressed at every level of biological organization: the architectural ingenuity of a spider’s web, the versatility of a mimic octopus, the geometric precision of a puffer fish's art, the navigational virtuosity of migratory birds like the Arctic Tern, to name a few.
Creativity and Illusion: While usually one talks about Creation, Conservation and Destruction as primary functions of nature, a fascinating aspect of life is Illusion (Maya - as spiritualists in India term it). Intriguing parallels have been drawn between the large-scale structure of the universe and the micro-architecture of the brain cell9: both display vast networks of nodes connected by filaments, with patterns of activation rippling through them. At least to our perception, brain cells are mortal, subject to apoptotic and necrotic cell death, whereas the cosmos persists much, much longer. A fascinating question is - are the innumerable stars scattered across the observable universe no more than neurons firing at different times in the mental fabric of a single larger being, whose births and deaths seem to us like transformational events with each discharge? The answer is beyond our grasp now but what is comprehensible even in this scenario is that the common denominator is yet again, Creativity, which directs innumerable worlds of such super organisms.
VII. An Undiscovered Dimension?
From a scientific standpoint, is Creativity a fundamental dimension of reality that physics has not yet formally recognised? If so, it would be something far subtler and more sophisticated than anything currently mapped in our scientific ontology - yet it would permeate every corner of the universe at every moment.
No existing framework - in neuroscience, physics, or philosophy - comes close to accounting for the millions of subtle mechanisms through which Creativity operates and the innumerable forms through which it manifests. The recognition of Creativity as a fundamental dimension would represent an expansion of our scientific and metaphysical vocabulary comparable in scope to the recognition of space, time, and energy as fundamental categories.
VIII. Creativity, Consciousness and Will
The relationship between Creativity, Consciousness, and Will is one of synthesis rather than rivalry. Consciousness is the eternal, still witness, but devoid of Energy, it cannot control anything. Creativity is the dynamic force that activates Consciousness. Abhinavagupta (950–1020 CE) synthesized Prakāśa (pure consciousness) with Vimarśa (creative awareness)10, suggesting that while they are one reality, it is the creative recognition that manifests the universe. Modern quantum biology research suggests these processes are embedded in the living fabric of organisms.
What of Will? Is the intentional direction of effort a prerequisite for Creativity? The evidence suggests not. There are well-documented instances of persons creating spontaneously, without prior intention - moments of sudden inspiration in which the creative act seems to precede and surprise the creating agent. Conversely, there are those who desire intensely to be creative but find that the creative capacity does not respond to their willingness alone. This asymmetry reveals something important: Creativity is a spontaneous force that operates independently of Will. Will may be a channel through which Creativity flows, but it is not the source.
IX. Degrees of Creativity and Re-creativity
Human creativity does not exist at a single level. At one extreme, the great artists, composers, mathematicians and scientists who reshape entire domains of human understanding are widely recognised as operating at exceptional degrees of creative intensity. But even those whose working lives appear to call for little imagination will, at some moment or another, find themselves called upon to creatively solve an unexpected problem, to adapt to a changed situation and to find a new way through. Creativity pervades human life at every level of intensity, just as it pervades the cosmos.
A particular refinement of this point deserves attention. What of the musician who performs the same composition (or same Raga) repeatedly? Far from being a merely mechanical reproduction, a truly living performance involves re-creativity: the work is encountered anew each time, and it is only this renewal that keeps the music alive in the listener's experience. Neuroscientific research has shown that creative cognition involves dynamic interactions among the brain's default mode, salience, and executive control networks, pointing to a distinctive neural substrate for originality and novelty.
This is not a minor technical point about performance practice. It is an instance of the same principle that operates at the cosmic scale: the same forms - the same species, the same stellar configurations, the same patterns of life - are created again and again across the universe, not mechanically but creatively, each instantiation being a genuine act of Creativity at work.
X. Creativity and Choice
A final and unavoidable question: If Creativity is the supreme driving force of everything, what remains for the individual being? Does Creativity's omnipotence entail that every action is predetermined and that the created being has no genuine agency?
The answer is nuanced. Many creatures have been endowed with the capacity to make choices. Choices are, as it were, the crossroads of destiny on the highway of existence: they are real, they matter, and they are genuinely the creature's own. But the capacity for choice is itself a creative endowment - it is Creativity that has brought it into being, and it is that very same entity that continues to shape the landscape of possibilities within which choices are made. Agency and Creativity are not rivals; the former is a particular, wondrous manifestation of the latter.
Conclusion: Merger of Significant and Insignificant
This essay has examined why the candidacies of Consciousness, Energy, Truth, Love etc are inadequate as Prime Movers of the universe. While each illuminates facets or fascinating sides of existence, none fully accounts for its totality. The principle best meeting the requirements of a Prime Mover is Creativity, which in fact bestows us the ability to creatively examine all the above mentioned entities. Almost every imaginable description attributable to the Almighty fits Creativity - it is incomparable, immeasurable, incomprehensible, transcendent, omnipresent, omnipotent and thereby omniscient, operating at every scale from the sub-atomic to the super galactic, preceding and generating every law of nature.
This framework shifts our understanding fundamentally. For science, it posits Creativity as a primary dimension yet to be formally theorized or empirically mapped—suggesting that phenomena like quantum indeterminacy and the inexplicable spontaneity of creative acts are windows into a cosmic process. For philosophy, it compels a reconsideration of agency, determinism and the relationship between human acts of creation and the universal force from which they draw life. For the individual, it offers a profound reorientation: every genuine creative act is a local manifestation of the universe's most fundamental principle.
Temples of Creativity
Creativity obviously does not await our recognition - it would make no difference to it if millions of Temples of Creativity were to spring up across the universe full of ritualistic reverence or if it were to be intellectualised in experiments and conferences or romanticized by poets and performers. Any tasks current or future scientists and philosophers set for themselves such as developing the conceptual and empirical tools adequate to its description, bringing to the study of Creativity the same disciplined intelligence applied to all other domains of inquiry may well constitute the most significant intellectual advance in the history of our species - but will yet be completely insignificant to the great phenomenon of Creativity. But the beauty of our species is that such things have never stopped us, and never will.
Notes
1 Isaacson, W. (2007). Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon & Schuster.
2 Rig Veda 10.129 (Nāsadīya Sūkta), c. 1500–1000 BCE. Trans. Wendy Doniger. In The Rig Veda: An Anthology. London: Penguin Classics, 1981. This hymn describes a primordial state “before creation” where "neither being nor non‑being existed", no space, no sky, and refers to an emergence of the cosmos from an undifferentiated state, followed by a possible re‑absorption into “that One."
3 Aristotle. Metaphysics, Book XII (Lambda), c. 350 BCE. Trans. W.D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.
4 Schrödinger, E. (1967). What is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5 Hameroff, S. & Penrose, R. (2014). Consciousness in the universe: A review of the 'Orch OR' theory. Physics of Life Reviews, 11(1), 39–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002
6 Whitehead, A. N. (1929). Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Macmillan.
7 Greene, B. (1999). The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. New York: W. W. Norton.
8 Einstein, A. (1905). Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content? Annalen der Physik, 18, 639–641.
9 Vazza, F., Feletti, A., & Cautun, M. (2020). The quantitative comparison between the neuronal network and the cosmic web. Frontiers in Physics, 8, 525731. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2020.525731
10 Abhinavagupta. Tantrāloka (Light on the Tantras), c. 1000 CE. See: Muller-Ortega, P. E. (1989). The Triadic Heart of Śiva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta. Albany: SUNY Press.
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