There is a simple rule in any logical deduction – you never question the axioms 😉 You need to play the game within the preset rules. Can we explain the Upanishadic concept of some Atma emerging as a world, which obviously is full of miseries, without resorting to the concept of illusion or by totally dismissing the occurrence of some such event? We need to do that within the framework of Upanishadic assumptions. How do we do that?
Before we get to that, let us understand some fundamentals.
Look at an electric fan for example. It starts to rotate only when its switch is turned ON. It stops only when that switch is turned OFF. It moves faster or slower only depending on how you tweak the speed regulator. That means, whatever the fan does, is purely based on some cause. It can’t do anything on its own. That is because the fan is an inert thing. It lacks a will to do something which is not prompted by any cause. That means, it is purely governed by causality. That is how all inert things are.
Now go slightly higher. Look at a stray dog for example. It eats when it is hungry. It sleeps when it is tired. It barks when it is afraid. It goes after a mate in the season. Everything is decided by basic instincts that provide a cause. That does not mean that the dog is also like a fan. No. It is not inert. At times it can act without any cause. But rarely so. It does it because it has some free will.
Let us look at more evolved beings like we humans. We are also driven by causality for most practical purposes. But we are better than a street dog which is totally under the control of instincts most of the time. Well, I am talking about slightly evolved human beings 😉
We do many things without being prompted by any cause. That is because we have the capability to modulate our basic instincts and we can also assert our free will most of the time. We are much better than inert things. We are also better than low level creatures. But still, we are driven by causality and we do many things forced by circumstances and not purely based on our free will. Well, let us not talk about modern scientists like Benjamin Libet who even dismissed the existence of any such thing as free will. Let us talk about intelligent living beings and not about biological robots 😉
Look at this broad spectrum of completely inert things on one extreme end and varying degrees of free will in between. Like what mathematicians say, what is the limiting case? Or in other words, what is the state at the other end of this broad spectrum. Probably you will find something which is completely outside the domain of causality and has unlimited free will. In that state, such a thing does not need a cause to do anything. It just asserts its free will.
And that limit is God or Atma of the Upanishads. It is totally outside the domain of causality. It can do anything without there being any cause. That is why the words used in the Chandogya Upanishad, when it describes the event of Atma becoming multiple, are ‘The Atma thought - let me be many’ and not ‘Atma wanted to be many’. Any want is a cause to get into action. And something that is free from any wants and also outside the domain of causality cannot want to do something. It just ‘wills’ to do something. So, whatever Atma did was not under any compulsion but out of its own free will.
But we, operating within the domain of causality, are so used to asking ‘why’ of everything since we are not totally free from causality. So, we ask ‘Why did the Atma become many?’. This question itself is meaningless since it assumes that the Atma is within the domain of causality. Atma did it ‘just like that’! Not because it had any cause.
Again, as human beings, however evolved we are, can’t accept this simple and obvious answer. We try to invent a cause which is a contradiction to our assumption that this Atma is outside the domain of causality.
One of the explanations normally given by Indian philosophers is that Atma was just being playful! It wanted to do some mischief, as if. So, they say that this world is just an ‘act of play’ of Atma or God. In fact, one of the Sanskrit words often used to denote God is Deva. This very word means – someone who is playful.
From human point of view, it sounds quite cruel to even suggest that this world is a playful act of God. This world as we experience it, is full of miseries and saying that we have a God who creates such a world just for the fun of it, is nothing short of sadism.
Buddha totally avoided answering this question by dismissing the question itself. He said that no God ever created this world and the miseries are because of our own actions or Karma. Judaic religions brought in the concept of ‘first sin’ and attributed all our miseries to the first sin committed by Adam and Eve. Even though we had no role in that sin, we somehow inherited it! Islam said that miseries are a way of God testing us… Do we see a hint of sadism even here? 😉
Each answer has flaws. But all of them show our obsession to ask ‘why’ of everything. But if we look at the fundamentals, this very question makes no sense. If we focus on the Upanishads and the narration of the emergence of the world, this very question can never be answered since the agent of whatever happened is not under the purview of causality. So, the ‘why’ question does not apply to it. That is why I said – ‘Atma did what it did - JUST LIKE THAT’ 😉
So, not all questions have answers. Nor all questions are valid per se. We can only say – ‘the answer is beyond our domain of knowledge’.
But the world that ‘we’ live in, is not beyond the domain of causality. So, questions like ‘why is there suffering?’, ‘what is the purpose of life?” are all valid questions even though we may still not have correct answers to them and often end up giving dumb answers to these questions.
One such answer that often amuses me is the answer which most modern Advaiti Gurus give to the second question namely ‘what is the purpose of life?’. They firmly believe that the answer to this question is ‘purpose of life is to attain liberation’! It is like saying ‘we are born so that we can die’ – sort of contradiction. Unless you answer the first question, namely ‘why Atma brought about this world’, the ‘purpose of life’ question cannot be answered. We can only hazard guesses.
No comments:
Post a Comment