Does the concept of God lead to endless regress? (Upanishads...)

Many modern intellectuals opine that since the concept of God as the prime cause leads to endless regress, God does not exist! They ask what caused God... and so on.

This argument is probably valid in the context of God that is defined as a person, almost like human, with all emotions, one who explicitly creates the world and so on. But look at the way the Upanishads talk about God.

• Ätma (or God) is beyond space and time.
• It is always defined by saying what it is not (Neti, Neti) and not by any explicit description of it.
• It does not create the world in the mundane sense. It just takes several forms, each of which coexists with other forms. And this multiplicity of forms is what we call universe.
• In fact each and everything in this universe is a ‘form taken by Ätma’. There is a beginning and end to these forms, but not to the one who took these forms.

How do these  assertions avoid endless regress?

If something is beyond space and time, the question “how did it come into existence?” does not make any sense. Something can come into existence at some time if it did not exist prior to that. If that thing is beyond space and time, all that it means is that it was always there and it will exist forever.

If someone argues that, “in that case, why not assume the same for the Universe? Why invent God?” Then the answer is “Universe is just a form taken by the God”. Appearance and disappearance of these forms are evident and so, the forms are not eternal.

Ätma’s description by negation (Neti, Neti) means that it is not something that can be described using any vocabulary we have. Or in other words, it is abstract and beyond the concepts of existence, non existence, subject, object and so on.

Upanishads insist that nothing can be created nor destroyed per se. Things only take new forms and continue to exist. This applies to Ätma as well as the Universe. Only when we look from the level of space/time limited view, we talk in terms of creation and destruction.

To explain in other words, God is the limiting point of existence.

All that is fine. But how can we be sure that whatever the sages 'saw' in their meditative states is not just some illusion they had?

We will discuss that in the next post.

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