Creation ... etc

[Chandran, Nanda (NBC)]

For quite a while now I've been pondering on the concept of creation etc
I'll state what I've read and understood from various sources and I
request members to correct me where I'm erring and also throw more light
on issues where I'm not clear :

The shruti states in the beginning there was only One. Then it saw
(Sadananda beautifully explained this a few days back) and thought (???)
that it should become many. And hence the Universe was created.

Buddha, on the concept of a God argues that in the world that we know,
is there anything which is self existant? Something which doesn't depend
on something else for existance and hence in nature transient. When
that's the case, how can we talk about an eternal being? (But can we
rule out that there can be something which is eternal just because we
don't know about it).

But Thomas Aquinas explaining the cause and effect concept explains that
the very nature of the effect, which itself becomes another cause
eventually, makes it impermenant. So if we retrace the effect with it's
cause it just can't go ad infinitum. It's to start at some point for it
couldn't have come out of nothing. And  the first cause which started
it, itself cannot be impermenant and thus it's God.
(But can the process being ad infinitum itself be ruled out?)

But the Buddha thinks that it's unthinkable that beings enveloped in
ignorance (avidya) could have walked the earth in the beginning.

OK, let's suppose that there was initially only conciousness and then it
created the universe and also two humans (Adi and Bhagavan, as in Tamil
mythology) to walk the earth. Since there was only one that means that
the universe and the empirical world cannot have been produced out of
nothing. Even these should have been created out of the One? (Am I
right?).

I tried to go further but it got a bit too confusing. First let's get
the above ideas right and then proceed further :-)!!!

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