  We show why the universe started in an unstable de Sitter state. The quantum
origin of our universe implies one must take a `top down' approach to the
problem of initial conditions in cosmology, in which the histories that
contribute to the path integral, depend on the observable being measured. Using
the no boundary proposal to specify the class of histories, we study the
quantum cosmological origin of an inflationary universe in theories like trace
anomaly driven inflation in which the effective potential has a local maximum.
We find that an expanding universe is most likely to emerge in an unstable de
Sitter state, by semiclassical tunneling via a Hawking-Moss instanton. Since
the top down view is forced upon us by the quantum nature of the universe, we
argue that the approach developed here should still apply when the framework of
quantum cosmology will be based on M-Theory.
