Trace the cause from the effect

If you want to know the origin of the universe, keep tracing back the cause, starting from the effect. You will eventually reach the starting point.

For example, you see a huge tree with hundreds of branches, thousands of leaves and so on. How did this tree come into existence?

The leaves sprouted from the branches; the branches from the trunk; the trunk from the root; the roots from the seed. The seed may be very tiny but it is what brought up the massive tree. You can’t see the tree in the seed, but you can infer it by back tracing.

Now, how did the seed sprout into a tree? It got the energy from the soil, water and sunlight. And from where did soil, water and sunlight come from?

In this way, you can back trace each and everything in this world and infer the ultimate cause. The ancient Indians inferred the penultimate cause to be three basic elements – sathwa, rajas and tamas - and the soul. And the ultimate cause that gave rise to these is the ‘existence’ itself, which they called Sath.

There is another way to infer this.

We will see that in the next post. 

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This is a series of posts based on the well known discussion in Chändogya Upanishad (part of Säma Veda, believed to have been recorded more than 3000 years ago) regarding ultimate truths.