Hi Ram,

Thanks for your reply-mail. I am studying your "Teaching Enlightenment" with great satisfaction because it confirms my vague judgment when reading the book of  guru X. 

One question in this context: you say: "The Self exists, then a big blowout comes ... Maya ... and then the jivas, the individual souls appear."

This point has irritated me already last November when you said that we don’t know how and why the Self "degenerated" to the given world. Isn’t this a very weak explanation for such an important aspect???  In medieval art, they used the "deus ex machina" ("God out of the machine") quite frequently.  But what I can easily accept as an ingenuous art mechanism, I would not want to build my explanation of the cosmos and the world on such an easy "way out".  Perhaps the "karma-world" is just the "wild" outcome of the evolutionary process (of which nobody knows the starting point till today)? 

Best regards

Martin 

 

Hi Martin,

Yes, any explanation is questionable since there is no way to verify the actual process.  It was not really fair for me to treat this topic so lightly but I’m a died in the wool non-dualist and creation theories are not really my cup of tea, although the Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras talk a lot about them and the Samkhya theory of the evolution of the subtle elements (tanmatras) which you find in Shankara’s Tattva Bodha is quite reasonable.  My view is that there is no real contradiction between the big bang and gradual evolution.  I think that perhaps the elements exploded to create the material aspect of reality (evidently it was an amazing force because the universe is still expanding…if our scientific observations are to be believed) and then over time the interaction of insentient matter and its conscious substrate produced the first sense organ…and things evolved from there. 

There is an obvious similarity between the basic Vedic idea of creation and the Western evolutionary model: both posit the existence of the elements first and the evolution of life later.  Both the Western and the Vedic views have a problem, however.

The Western view claims that consciousness comes out of matter at some point in evolution.  But this is simply not possible.  How can the elements change their nature?  They are unconscious and do not ‘become’ conscious.  Consciousness is not ‘in’ matter, matter is ‘in’ C Consciousness.  This is simply a matter of common sense…although Western science can’t seem to see it. 

The Vedic view has this problem: why would non-dual Consciousness feel the need to become many?  The non-dualists get around this by saying (1) that it never did become many and (2) the intellect can’t understand because the cause of creation is also the cause of the intellect which evolved much later in the evolutionary time frame and because the cause is subtler than its effect, the intellect, the intellect can’t grasp it.  So they dismiss this cause hunting and say, “It is just the nature of the Self.”  The non-dualists also say that the perception of duality/multiplicity/plurality is simply a trick of the mind (Maya) and this theory was verified by the science of Yoga which allows human beings to transcend the mind and ‘merge’ into Consciousness and when this merger or awakening happens one can see how the mind is projecting the creation, like it projects a snake in a rope or a mirage on the desert.

While the qualified non-dualists agree that everything is Consciousness and that the purpose of life is moksha through Self knowledge they admit the existence of the world and give it a ‘qualified’ existence…for the purposes of teaching.  That is to say, people cannot just grasp non-duality all at once so they need an intermediate teaching to explain the relationship between Consciousness and matter.  This teaching is contained in Shankara’s famous statement which I explained in the seminar, Brahma Satyam jagan mithya.  The Self alone is real, the world is an apparent reality.  The interesting thing about this idea is that the world is not said to be an illusion.  To call the world mithya is to endow it with a peculiar ontological status: it is neither real nor unreal.   It is not real because it constantly changes and does not exist in the Self, so it is limited.  But it is not unreal either because it exists.  It is experienced.  But its existence is qualified by time, the senses and its dependence on Consciousness.  It appears and it disappears.  When through meditative inquiry you get down to the interface of the mind and the Self you can actually experience the world appearing and disappearing simultaneously.    

But all these ideas are trumped by the problem of suffering.  People are looking for answers that will remove their suffering.  And it has been shown that the suffering caused by the individual’s creation (jiva sristi) can be removed by self inquiry because creation for an individual is just projection caused by Self ignorance.  And Self ignorance can be removed through Self knowledge…leaving one as one always was…uncreated pure Consciousness.  No individual can remove the Self’s creation (Ishwara sristi) because the power and knowledge of individuals is limited and the Self’s power is limitless.  Additionally, the Upanishads say that the creation only covers a small fraction of the Self.  So once you have resolved the creation mystery you have a much bigger mystery to resolve.  This is why I said above that creation theories are not my cup of tea.  I was unable to give this topic the time it deserved in the seminar not only because it is tangential to Self realization but because most people are not philosophically inclined and even those that are tend not to be rigorous thinkers.

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘wild outcome’ because from the Self’s point of view the whole creation is terribly logical and sensible.  In fact it is an amazing work of art, not without a large dollop of humor.  One can see that everything in it…minus man’s ignorance…expresses the nature of the Self in the most exquisite and wonderful way.  When I look at a sunset or a tree or a river or a human being or an animal I see the Self.  When you look at anything carefully enough and discount the conditioned ideas that come into the mind, the whole creation stands shimmering as a radiant symbol of the Self and, letting one’s mind become absorbed in it, one enters Its silent dimension. 

It is easy to be fooled by chaos into thinking that this is all an accident but I don’t think so and the Vedas would agree with me.  I think the ‘ex-machina’ in Deus ex-machina is an attempt to point out the precise and conscious nature of the universe.  God, the Self, is totally predictable…it never changes…and anything that comes from something so eternally constant cannot help but be perfect also.  In fact the Self is so secure and certain in Its limitless power and knowledge that It can allow chaos into its creation, not as the primary principle but as a subsidiary principle…without compromising the perfect operation of the machine. If things were random and ‘wild’, purposeful work would not be possible.  But it is because the creation is so carefully regulated by the presence of Awareness that every thing follows its nature.  Water has always been wet and will never be dry.  Sugar will continue to be sweet as long as there is sugar.   Gravity will keep right on being gravity until the day the cosmos dies.  If things were absolutely uncertain I would not even get out of bed in the morning for fear that my legs might become wings and cause me to fly. 

I’m not sure why you think a predictable karma world is an ‘easy way out.’  If someone is trying to figure out what life is it seems to me you have to start with the Self.  And once you accept the Self everything is very easy, the creation included.  If the creation is a chaos then human beings are condemned to a life of complete uncertainty.  Yet, in spite of all sorts of fears, human life…where there is choice…is remarkably steady.   The sun comes up and the sun goes down.  People are born, live their lives like they always have, die off and another generation takes their place and nothing really changes.  Yes, it is quite the fashion to make a big fuss about cataclysmic and apocalyptic events.  Humans love to shake and shiver when they contemplate the ‘end times’ just as they do in a scary movie or on an amusement park ride…or while thinking about 9/11…but nothing every really happens: the world never ends and people switch to the ‘reality’ shows or football when the dust from the twin towers settles.  I know this is the minority view but basically life is a well oiled perpetual motion machine…or so it appears to me.   If it wasn’t so beautiful it would be completely boring.  So even if you discount the Self completely you have a very conscious and purposeful (relatively) eternal creation on which to build a theory of life…assuming that you forgo the media’s frantic ideas and views of dyspeptic philosophers and just walk out into the world with a quiet mind and have a look.     
 
I hope this has been of use to you.    It is as always good to hear from you and to continue our discussion.   I’m also glad that the satsang ‘Teaching Enlightenment’ has been helpful.  All the best.

Ram