Of God, By God, For God
Article on Vedanta by Raju Chidambaram
16 November, 2003
The following interesting article on Vedanta was written by a friend and fellow member of the Chinmaya Mission here in Washington, D.C. He gave me permission to post it and to use his full name.
Some comments of mine follow, in which I take issue with a few minor points. Basically, we agree, and you can ignore my comments.
I might add that Raju has a Ph.D. in a statistical area called Operation Theory, and he and his wife Shobha (a doctor) are founding members of the Chinmaya Mission in Washington, D.C. They remain very active. Also, they had the privilege of hearing Swami Chinmayananda when he was still with us. Quite a full life!
Note that B-M-I or Body-Mind-Intellect are basic to Swami Chinmayananda's exposition of Vedanta. You can read a bit more about it at Manual of Self-Unfoldment, Ch. 5 and at CMWRC BMI Chart
Benjamin
UNRAVELING UNCERTAINTY: Advaitin's Adventure In Ananda's Wonderland
We start with a simple story.
A married couple, following their annual Deepavali tradition, enters a fashionable saree store to buy a silk saree for the wife. This couple is a rarity in that husband is wise and sensitive to every wish of his wife while the wife accepts her husband's judgment without reserve. At the saree shop, the sales assistant spreads before them dozens of dazzling sarees that are the rage this year. Husband listens attentively to his wife as she examines each saree and comments variously:
"I really like this green one. It is gorgeous and it feels so nice to touch. Too bad, because I already have too many in green".
"This blue looks great too, especially the border. May be I should get this. What do you think?"
"Look at this one! Wonderful design and the red color is so pretty. I bet nobody I know will have one like this. But the price!"
After about half an hour and two rounds of complimentary soft drinks, the husband knows the time has arrived when the wife turns to him holding several sarees in her hand and asks:
"Well, what do you suggest? I can't make up my mind among these. Which one should I buy?"
The husband, having in the meantime judged her inclinations reasonably well, makes the choice. She is relieved that a decision is made and is also happy at the prospect of wearing her new saree. Satisfied, husband and wife return home from a happy shopping trip.
This is admittedly a not very exciting story. Its purpose however is to suggest a paradigm within the structure of Vedanta to explain one of the greatest mysteries of life: Uncertainty.
If that piques your interest, please read on.
THE ADVAITIC VISION OF THE WORLD: OF GOD, BY GOD, FOR GOD
Whether it is science or Vedanta, its world-view must account for four fundamental facts:
a. A world (of gross matter and subtle mind stuff) is experienced
b. This world is in constant change
c. The changes are unpredictable
d. There is knowledge of the above facts
The world-view of Advaita can be summarized thus: Brahman alone is the sole and supreme Reality; It is however Unmanifest. Brahman, in Its role as Ishwara, the creator, wields the illusive power of Maya to manifest Itself as Prakriti, this ever changing world. All aspects of the phenomenal world are explained in Advaita in terms of the three concepts: the unmanifest Brahman and its manifestation as Ishwara and Prakriti. Indeed the Advaitic vision of the world can be summarized thus: The world is made of God (namely, Prakriti), directed by God (namely, Ishwara), for the enjoyment of God (namely, Brahman having "entered" the individual creatures of Prakriti).
"Made of Prakriti": This is explained in texts such as Tatvabodh. Prakriti is the womb of creation for everything from the five great elements to gross objects and the subtle mind and intellect. Unlike Brahman and Ishwara, which are unitary and partless, Prakriti is manifold consisting of countless individuals of different forms, names and gunas. Every individual entity in Prakriti has one or both of gross matter (B, the body) and subtle mind (M-I, the mind-intellect complex). Entities that possess only gross matter can be referred to as "(inert) things" and those which have M and I (with or without B) as "beings".
The agents or forces of change in Prakriti are the vasanas, which act on things and beings of the world, causing them to move constantly from one state to another. The vasanas are also manifold: The set of vasanas that affect each individual thing or being is generally unique to that individual, causing it to behave in its own unique ways. For inert matter, all the forces of nature known to science are included in their vasanas.
"Directed by Ishwara": Ishwara, the Lord, has command over Prakriti and over the happenings of this world. How Ishwara and Prakriti together control the world is the central theme of discussion later in this article. In the course of this discussion we will also answer a related question: Is Ishwara subject to Prakriti's laws? If yes, how does that make Ishwara the Lord of the world? On the other hand if the answer is no, how do Ishwara and Prakriti work together without conflict?
"For the Enjoyment of": Brahman (or more specifically the Consciousness aspect of Brahman), enchanted as it were by Its own creation, "enters" or "identifies" with the beings in the Prakriti to give rise to sentient jeevas. One may represent this symbolically as
where the "+" sign denotes identification of Brahman with the "i-th" being in Prakriti. Every Jeeva, including you and me, is thus a complex entity that has the same real part (Brahman) and an imaginary part (namely, our individual B-M-I). As the above symbolic representation indicates, the B-M-I is unreal from the point of view of Brahman, but quite real for the Jeeva. The chit or consciousness aspect of Brahman "reflecting" on M and I of the being gives rise to the illusion of a sentient, knowing, individual "enjoying" (i.e. experiencing) the world. (1,2).
Brahman, the Satchidananda, permeates the creation. The Sat aspect lends material existence to things and beings, and the Chit aspect manifests as knowledge and experience of the world. What about Ananda? There are suggestions in our scriptures that vasanas are an expression of the Ananda aspect of Brahman. In other words, Ananda can be viewed as the primal force behind all manifest forces in creation and evolution.
This in a nutshell is how Advaita explains the world, the forces that change it, and knowledge there is of the world. But the mystery of Uncertainty yet remains to be addressed.
UNCERTAINTY IS OMNIPRESENT
Uncertainty's reach is everywhere; behavior of both matter and mind is unpredictable. Theory and experiments of modern physics confirm the fundamentally unpredictable nature of matter. In the absence of a witnessing observer, matter "exists", as it were, merely as an ethereal, abstract cloud of all states it can possibly be in. When brought under conscious observation, the cloud condenses to one of those states. The state into which it will condense cannot be predicted in advance, but one can only specify the probabilities for different states mathematically via the so-called "wave function".
Uncertainty is noticeably significant in the behavior of individual elementary particles of which all matter is composed. When the particles aggregate to form larger structures, the uncertainty diminishes in its relative importance and, while theoretically still present, is less of a problem. This fact is of enormous importance: life's transactions will be unimaginably difficult if the same relative levels of uncertainty were to exist at macro levels of aggregation (3).
Far more important to our daily lives is the way uncertainty affects the mind-intellect complex. The reference here is to the uncertainty surrounding human decision making which bears, as we will see below, a striking resemblance to the quantum mechanical uncertainty enveloping matter (4). That uncertainty is inherent in decision making is obvious: If there is an instance where the outcome of a certain decision-making situation is predictable with absolute certainty, then there is really no true decision making to be done in that particular case. Free will implies uncertainty. Needless to say, our every day life is affected greatly by the decisions made by ourselves and others.
Uncertainty thus affects everything from elementary particles to human beings and in much the same way. Science does not attempt to give meaning to uncertainty, except to acknowledge grudgingly that it is here, it is unavoidable and is a mystery. However, it is possible to discuss this question intelligently within the Advaitic framework.
MANY POSSIBILITIES, ONE ACTUALITY
A key to this framework is to recognize vasanas, the agents of change in Prakriti, as "tendencies" or "propensities". A tendency does not force the entity it acts on to behave in a particular way, but only makes it likely that it will behave that way. For example, someone with a "coffee vasana" need not drink coffee every time it is available. True, the likelihood of drinking coffee will be higher if the vasana is stronger. When several vasanas act simultaneously on an entity, as they generally do, the probability of various behavior modes resulting from their combined effect will depend on the relative strengths of these vasanas.
Reverting to our lead story, the wife has several vasanas affecting her mind that day: her liking for green color; the need to economize on spending; bragging right that comes from possessing something your friends do not have etc, etc. Each saree she can potentially choose, "exhausts" (i.e. satisfies) these vasanas to different degrees. Depending on how strong each vasanas is, and how well each potential choice satisfies each vasana, we can assign to each saree, at least conceptually, a probability that she will choose it. Faced with the many sarees as possible choice, her mind is- to borrow a quantum mechanical term- in a state of "superposition of sarees". This is when she looks to her husband for help with the choice.
Whether it is matter or mind, we thus see that Prakriti and its vasanas determine the world only "up to its probabilities", - or "up to its wave function" as a physicist may put it- meaning, Nature and its forces determine only the probability of various possible future states for the world.
Of the many possibilities one, and only one, becomes actuality (5). The process by which one of the many possibilities is selected to become the actuality is indeed the central mystery of Uncertainty. This choice, it is postulated based on our scriptures, is the prerogative of the Supreme Lord, Ishwara, who thereby exercises control over the entire creation, from the minutest of matter to the subtle mind of the most evolved being. Ishwaras free will thus directs the universe while still remaining within the bounds of the natural laws. There is no conflict between Prakriti and Ishwara. They could be the ideal couple in the saree shop story; only the world they create together is anything but unexciting!
PRAKRITI PROPOSES, ISHWARA DISPOSES
Prakriti and Ishwara are vital cooperating partners in the affairs of this creation. Without Ishwara's will to make the choice, Prakriti is in limbo, remaining a mere possibility. On the other hand, without Prakriti, Ishwara has nothing to choose from, the situation looking somewhat like the empty refrigerator when the wife is away visiting her parents. Prakriti proposes various choices and makes known her preferences for these choices; Ishwara makes the choice with due deference to Prakriti's preferences, but in a probabilistic sense.
The need to conform to Parkriti's preferences does not impose any real limitation to Ishwara's free will, since these preferences are expressed as probabilities. Without getting into a laborious philosophical discussion on the nature of probabilities and randomness, it will suffice to note that under probabilistic laws, as opposed to deterministic laws, almost anything is permitted to occur sooner or later (6). There is room in the world for observing Prakriti's laws while also exhibiting the compassion Ishwara has for the jeevas.
IS THERE A FREE PERSONAL WILL?
If Ishwara is the one exercising the choice in all cases, does it not negate the personal free will of all creatures? It does. The verdict of scientists and sages alike seem to support the view that free will of jeevas is at best a false notion born of an illusory ego. Sri Ramakrishna has commented on several occasions affirming this view. Realized masters are said to live as mere instruments of the Lord, acting out His will. It cannot be that, on attaining realization, they give up some real personal will-power they once enjoyed. Realization is not supposed to diminish one's power, it is supposed to bless the master with more powers, "Ishwarathvam" as Dakshinamoorthy Stotram calls it. It is more likely that it becomes clear to the sage on realization that there is no, nor there ever was, such a thing as personal free will.
Scientists too admit that they have presently no idea how the human brain makes decisions. There is experimental evidence suggesting that decisions are made somewhere within us before we even become aware of them. It is after this belated recognition that our ego, like a shrewd politician, rushes in to claim it as "my decision"! Einstein drives the point home deftly when he asks whether one "wills to will". If willing were a purposeful act, then we have to first "will to will", and before that "will to will to will" and so forth. Therefore the will expressed through us is not of our doing, but rather it is something done to us; it cannot be rightfully claimed as ours.
WHERE IS ISHWARA?
Ishwara must be all-pervasive in order to affect every inert thing and sentient being of the creation. Where exactly is Ishwara, the possessor of free will, within us? It is not the intellect. Surely, intellect helps us with assembling and analyzing facts useful in decision making, but it is not where decisions are made (7). The seat of free will, if science and scriptures are to be believed, lies much deeper in our personality, beyond the realm of conscious mind and intellect.
Ishwara, says the Mandukya Upanishad, is the macrocosmic counterpart of Prajnya, the indweller of the ananda maya kosa in the individual. That is, Ishwara is the totality of all prajnyas. Stated another way, Ishwara controls each being remaining within it as the Prajnya. Ananda maya kosa is inaccessible to all outer layers of our personality, including the M and I, as we well know from the B-M-I chart. Decisions made in that inner most layer of our personality will not therefore become known to the M-I until the decision issues out as perceptible action (or as an absolutely firm resolve in the mind, if there is such a thing). This, we see, is consistent with the experimental results.
The Mandukya Karika further identifies the location of Prajnya as the "heart-space" in the individual, heart here signifying, as it does throughout our scriptures, the psychic center of our being. Viewed in this light, one of Lord Krishna's famous statements in Bhagavad Gita is quite significant: "Seated in the heart-space of every being, Oh! Arjuna, Ishwara manipulates them all".
What our scriptures have to say about Prajnya and heart-space is very revealing. The Mandukya extols Prajnya thus:
"This is the Lord of all; this is the inner controller; this is the source of all. And, this is that from which all things originate and in which they finally dissolve themselves."
This is indeed remarkable. Prajnya is being praised here in this venerable Upanishad in terms one would reserve for Ishwara itself! This, if I am not grossly mistaken, speaks to an awesome truth: At the deepest innermost level of each being, there is no separate individuality, but only totality. Another well-known scripture echoes much the same thoughts when Sage Vasishta, in answer to a question from Lord Rama, says: "All creatures in this universe have two kinds of hearts-one to be taken note of and the other ignored. The one to be ignored is the physical organ which is situated in the chest as a part of the perishable body. The one to be taken note of is the Heart which is of the nature consciousness. It is both inside and outside of us and has neither an inside nor an outside." This indicates that the heart-space inside is continuous with the heart-space outside in a single unbroken continuum encompassing all creation.
ANANDA BROUGHT US HERE, ANANDA WILL TAKE US BACK THERE
Individuality of things and beings, it would thus appear, is confined to their outer (i.e. B-M-I) layers only. At the deepest level of ananda maya kosa there is only totality, a totality that pervades and connects every thing and every being (8). Ananda maya kosa should not be seen merely as a sheath of ignorance into which the jeeva withdraws in deep slumber forgetting for a while its individuality. It is the powerhouse of vasanas that stands ready to set the world in motion in an infinite number of potentially different ways. Thus it is the field of all possibilities available for creation. At the same time, as we saw earlier, it is also the High Command from which things and beings receive their directions on which way to actually move. By extension, it must also be surely the spring well from which the finite receives the "intimations of the infinite": the Inspiration that the artists, Intuition that informs the scientists, and Revelations that enlighten the sages. This must be indeed the womb of creation and creativity. It is not without reason that the ancient seer-poets saw this creation as the Ananda Tandava (Dance of Bliss) of the Lord.
Ananda is the mother of all vasanas. If Ananda is what brings out the chaotic, relentlessly changing world out of the changeless Brahman, it is also that which makes the world seek peace and stability. Why else would inert objects automatically seek their equilibrium state, or individual beings search for happiness and peace, and societies demand freedom, equality and justice for all its members? Ultimately, mumukshutwa, the craving for God that the jeeva comes to feel sooner or later, is also due to Ananda. Sarvam Anandamayam- dukhah api. Everything is Bliss, even if at times it takes the form of grief!
WHY UNCERTAINTY?
Does uncertainty serve any purpose in creation? Is it not just a source of frustration and anxiety? The answer is to ask what a world in which everything is certain and predictable will be like. Hopes and dreams will have no rightful place in that world. It will be a rather dull, dreary and even fearful existence. (Who really cares to know the exact day in future that one will die?) On the other hand, if world were totally uncertain, existence will be impossibly nightmarish.
What we have instead is a world of mixed certainty and uncertainty that makes for a most enchanting combination. Many important things in the world are predictable and even controllable to a large degree, thanks to advances in science and engineering. Yet, many significant aspects of it remain uncertain. This is what makes the world entertaining like an engaging sport. A sport must have predictable rules as well as unpredictable outcome in order to entertain. A football game has its rules: when the offense does not complete 10 yards in four plays, it must turnover the ball to the other team, etc. There can be no uncertainty here. But the game will lose all its fascination if there were no uncertainty about what will happen in each of those four plays! Our scriptures rightly call this world as God's lila or sport for its ceaseless entertainment value. The purpose of life is one of two depending on who we are: For God and god-realized jeevas it is for entertainment; for the yet-to-become realized, it is a classroom filled with tears and laughs that will instruct the way to god-realization.
I hope this article has entertained you.
Footnotes:
(1) The bulk of the body of spiritual teaching in Vedanta, and to a degree in all religions, has to do with the reverse process of how a Jeeva may gain release from B-M-I identification and realize Brahman:
Jeevai - Prakritii = Brahman where the symbol "-" signifies the process of dissociation from B-M-I through one or more of the various yogas.
(2) Knowing and actively experiencing are two aspects of the sentient life of a jeeva. One way to explain the Vedantic view of these phenomena is by borrowing an analogy from communications technology. Pure Consciousness reflects off the satwic (steady, unagitated) intellect. This reflected light issues out of us as a steady beam to illuminate the objects around. We may call this as the beam of awareness to distinguish it from Consciousness. The beam of awareness is modulated by the objects (-like signals modifying a carrier wave-) at which time we become aware of them.
(3) The significant levels of uncertainty that results from incomplete or inaccurate knowledge of laws affecting matter is altogether a different phenomenon and is a serious problem at macro levels. Many examples can be cited: weather is one; response of a person to medications is another.
(4) "Vedanta of Decision Making" by this author in the Vol 4, No: 1 issue of Chinmaya Management Review, Dec 2000
(5) Some physicists hypothesize that all possibilities are in fact realized, but in different copies of the universe, including multiple copies of the jeevas- the so-called Parallel Universe theory. Be that as it may, each copy experiences only one universe.
(6) There is an analogy here that will be useful to anyone familiar with computer simulation of complex "stochastic" systems (i.e. systems subject to many uncertain factors) using the Monte Carlo method. The processes to be simulated are represented by probabilistic laws in the computer code. The various possible behavior patterns of the system are then created using a random number generator to make choices from the probability laws. The point to note here is that the random number generator has full freedom to choose from its domain of numbers. By analogy Ishwara's freedom of choice is totally unconstrained in His domain, which is the jagat.
(7) Intellectual analysis do alter the "wave function", that is the probability of choosing the various alternatives. If the intellect is pure and bright, it can help by increasing the probability of making the choice that is "right" from the broadest perspective.
(8) That there is an underlying totality connecting all beings and things should sit well with Quantum Physicists. One startling implication of their theory is what Einstein dubbed as "spooky action at a distance". This is a phenomenon where a pair of elementary particles co-ordinate their (otherwise unpredictable) behavior and act in perfect unison even when they are galaxies apart. It is as though the two particles can read each other's mind instantaneously! I understand this theory has been experimentally confirmed.
MY COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:
Namaste Raju,
It's about time I responded to your article on Advaita ... especially since we meet tonight! :-) I hope you get a chance to glance at this before then.
First of all, I want you to realize that I take philosophy and spirituality quite seriously, too seriously perhaps. What this means is that I have to say what I really think, which may not always agree with what you think. Of course, you realize this and accept it, like any reasonable human being, but I just thought I'd warn you anyway! I hope that my own introductory remarks are not too long-winded.
Now here is something we can both absolutely agree on. I share your feeling that the mere fact that anything exists at all is a kind of 'infinite miracle' that can only be explained in terms of some kind of 'God' or Divine Source, though the true nature of this Being far transcends any ordinary concepts. This is crucial, because as the scientists rightly say, there is no really bullet-proof 'empirical' evidence for God. You cannot use the techniques of science to either prove or disprove God, so belief must be based on something else. After reflecting on it for a long time, I decided that my simple intuition of the necessity of the Divine Source was satisfactory. The problem is that we normally take existence for granted, so that we feel there is nothing to explain. Once we become sensitized to the mystery of existence, we realize the need for an uncreated, uncaused source. The very words 'uncreated, uncaused source' are tantamount to a miracle, so that this source fulfills our usual notion of God or Brahman, though it far transcends it.
Now given this Source of Being, I feel that certain consequences follow. For example, I feel intuitively that it can only be of the nature of Consciousness. The notion of a material God is absurd. And this Consciousness must be infinite in every sense of the world, for what could limit the uncreated source of reality?
Furthermore, I believe that my own personal reality is entirely consciousness and nothing else. At the common-sense level, the so-called world of matter seems to be the source of my perceptions, and this material world seems to be made of unconscious, inert objects. But a little reflection shows that this world of objects is an entirely unfounded hypothesis, since I am only aware of my own consciousness, which includes perceptions but not the objects from which those perceptions supposedly originate. Hence, I must reject the hypothesis of material objects as unverifiable, and thus unjustified according to the very principles of science itself. And there are more subtle reasons for denying the objective world. For example, our very notions of space and time merely describe aspects of our perceptual consciousness, so that extrapolating them to a supposed 'outside' world is highly problematic and illegitimate. Therefore, my own personal 'world' is nothing but consciousness, just like the Source of Reality itself (a.k.a. Brahman or the Divine Consciousness). The external world is but a hallucination projected by my consciousness, just as in a dream.
It is then a short step to realizing that my own consciousness and the Divine Consciousness must be the same, and this leads us into a characteristically Indian spiritual view (as opposed to the Semitic view). The reason that my consciousness and the Divine Consciousness are inseparable is that nothing other than this Source of Reality can sustain its own existence. This is very similar to the view stated above for the existence of God in the first place. Hence, this divine 'power' must be present everywhere to sustain anything that exists, which, as we have seen, means the personal consciousness of you and me, since there is nothing else (i.e. no world of objects). At this point, the omnipresent divine consciousness seems like a vast ocean sustaining the drops of consciousness which are you and me, and those drops seem to merge back into the ocean and are ultimately inseparable from it. So far, I think you will agree that all this is quite Advaitic, or at least highly consistent with it.
Now here comes the crucial part, as far as your article is concerned. This Divine Consciousness is omnipresent and is the only true reality. Your consciousness and mine are only drops in this ocean, and the seeming world of inert objects is entirely illusory, like a dream. So everything is this Infinite Consciousness, which is also Infinite Intelligence. It seems to me to follow that nothing can be arbitrary or imperfect in this Infinite Intelligence, which in turn precludes the possibility of chance and choice, at least at the ultimate level. Of course, this conflicts sharply with your views, or does it? We will see.
Right now, I would like to finish this train of thought by saying that I am well aware of the problem of evil and ignorance. I can only assume that it is somehow necessary as part of the divine purpose for the overall evolution of our apparently individual consciousnesses from dark to light. My own idiosyncratic (and not particularly Advaitic) opinion is that God has created the illusion of personal consciousness as a kind of illusion to multiply the glory of his own consciousness, something like reflecting mirrors in an amusement park. Our personal consciousness does not exist independently of the divine consciousness, but by endowing it with certain patterns and properties which may *seem* to be free will, we are fooled into believing that we have a separate individuality. Free will is really a charade, and all of our actions and spiritual evolution follow from some mathematical equation emanating from the Mind of God. It is for the purpose of creating a charade of independent beings, thus creating the illusion of different 'people' enjoying life. But it is all rigorously pre-determined by the Nature of God, whatever that is. And as we learn to surrender to the God at the core of our being, we become more in tune with the Divine Charade and experience increasing happiness. We still retain the illusion of some kind of individuality, which helps to multiply God's bliss, but the greatest bliss is to abandon any sense of free-will and doership to his supreme wisdom. Then we achieve our full potential as conscious beings. That is my view.
Whew! So many boring words just to outline my philosophy, for whatever it is worth. The key point is that I believe that there is ultimately no chance whatsoever. If everything is God, I cannot reconcile that with any kind of chance. I may be mistaken, but that is how it seems to me at present. Hence, I believe that even Quantum Mechanics must ultimately be deterministic, just as Einstein stubbornly believed until the end of his life and against the prevailing scientific consensus. For example, I think that the photon or electron may actually expand into a real wave during its flight and then collapse back into a particle when it is detected. I am very suspicious that the notion of 'probability waves' is the ultimate reality. There are highly respected physicists such as David Bohm who have alternative workable theories that are deterministic. It is not as impossible as the scientific orthodoxy would have us believe. What we must abandon is the finite speed of light, i.e. the finite speed of the transmission of information (i.e. 'locality'), but I don't care so much about that anyway. I think the jury is still out on all this.
So let us finally get back to your article. Clearly you have no qualms about uncertainty. Perhaps this is a reflection of your background in mathematical statistics! :-) Indeed, you even say that 'free will implies uncertainty', which I entirely agree with ... and which is why I deny free will. It seems that we are philosophically incompatible, though I certainly hope that this does not affect our friendship! I am sure it will not. (By the way, some respectable Advaitins, such as Ramesh Balsekar, seem to agree with me on this.)
Thus you see vasanas as mere tendencies, whereas I think that our future as phenomenal beings is utterly programmed by these vasanas. This may seem abhorrent from a moral point of view, but I think that chance is far more incompatible with morality than having everything follow from God's nature in a pre-ordained fashion. From my perspective, true chance implies an utter *lack* of free will. Everything is a spin of the dice.
Of course, you do not take this extreme position, but rather than engage in a discussion of free-will, which is exceedingly difficult and subtle, I will instead take note of something important that you say next (which you highlighted in bold letters):
"The process by which one of the possibilities is selected to become the actuality is indeed the central mystery of Uncertainty. This choice, it is postulated based on our scriptures, is the prerogative of the Supreme Lord, Ishwara..."
This provides an indication that we may not be so far apart. You are now denying free-will to humans but giving it instead to Ishwara. This is rather close to my view, except that I would add that Ishwara does not have true free-will either, since everything must follow mathematically from the perfection of his nature. Everything in Samsara must proceed as it does, since Samsara is but the expression of his nature in the apparent phenomenal world. Hence, in my view, even Ishwara is not truly 'free', though his freedom is the entirely benign freedom of having no choice but to be perfect. (By the way, I'm sure that you know that Ishwara can exist only at the relative level of the Jiva and not at the ultimate nondual level, in which there is only One without a second.)
Later you explicitly agree with me that the individual has no true free will, only Ishwara does. Naturally, as an Advaitin, you must also agree that the individual is ultimately illusory, so what would be the meaning of free-will for an illusory being anyway? :-) You also refer to fascinating scientific evidence which I have also read showing that nerve impulses to the muscles may occur before the thought to act arises in the brain. This rather confirms what we have been saying!
You then go on to discuss 'ananda maya kosa' or the inner bliss sheath. This gets into a realm of Hindu esoterica with which I am still not entirely familiar. So I will demure on this topic. However, I do share your enthusiasm for the Mandukya Karika of Gaudapada. His 'ajativada' that nothing is created seems entirely consistent with my views as expressed above, especially if we interpret this to mean that no external material world exists at all.
You do say that our apparent individuality is confined to the outer layers of BMI (body, mind and intellect) and that the innermost ananda maya kosa is the Universal Source itself, which is the same in all and devoid of particularity. This is not inconsistent with what I said above. Remember that I do agree that our individuality is only apparent, but this illusion of individuality helps to 'effectively' multiply the Bliss of the Divine. After all, a pleasant dream is still a pleasant dream. And many pleasant dreams seems like many beings enjoying a pleasant dream, even if there is ultimately only one dreamer. The nature of illusion is very deep and mysterious. It is by no means all 'bad'; rather it has a most positive side as the divine magic spectacle.
In conclusion, I think we agree on a great deal. The primary difference may be that I am a bit more skeptical than you are that Quantum Mechanics is the final theory of physics. The pendulum may swing back in a deterministic direction, which would be more consistent with my understanding of the nature of God and of the illusory world which is but the magical and pre-determined manifestation of his Mind. And I would only add that for me even Ishwara is not truly free, but his lack of freedom follows only from his perfection, which is surely the best lack of freedom one could imagine. I hope this was not too long and boring, and I hope I made sense. Your article was very stimulating, and I would love to discuss it more some time at your convenience. In particular, you might lecture me on the various sheaths.
Hari Om, Benjamin
HIS REPLY TO MY COMMENTS:
Dear Ben:
Thanks for your thoughts and the trouble you have taken to pin point where exactly we differ. There is nothing more invigorating than a stimulating and honest exchange of thoughts. We all stand to only gain from these exchanges.
I am happy to see that we agree almost everywhere except in the freedom of Ishwara. Yes, I do believe that Ishwara is the controller and in no way the controlled. To me this almost the definition of Ishwara. Ishwara's decisions appear as unpredictable happenings to individuals, only because we are not privy to those decisions.
You raise an interesting point: Whether Ishwara's Perfection (-by that I assume you mean Ishwara's perfectly virtuous nature-) determines Its decisions totally so that this is really a deterministic world. This, as you point out, is where we differ. Ishwara's need to be Perfect determines the worldly outcomes only in the long run, leaving in the short term full freedom for Ishwara. (This is what I tried to point out using the Monte Carlo analogy in a footneote to my article.) In the long run, Virtue will prevail over evil, but in the short term there is room for mischief. This is our experience and this is what all our epic stories like Ramayana illustrate. World (Ishwara's play) is fascinating beacuse of short term grief and long-term hope for happiness.
I am not doubting that the world is illusory (-and your argument that there is no scientifically admissible evidence it is not illusory is on the mark-). But Advaita does not say that no sense can be made of this world because it is an illusion. This illusion is not meaningless and its meaning, to me, is that is a joyful magic show of the infinite Bliss illustrating in endless number of acts, its central theme: Virtue conquers Vice.
Hope this helps. Thank you for offering to post it in your On-Line List. You may do so if you think it will help us all.
Hari Om, Raju
LATER HE SENT THESE COMMENTS TOO:
Ben:
I have been thinking about the key difference in our viewpoints which has to do with Ishwara's free will. We really have no disagreement regarding uncertainty. You say outright that there really is no uncertainty. I am saying that it is Ishwara's choices which appear to us as 'random' choices, we being not privy to the rationale behind those choices. Your subsequent point is very interesting: Is Ishwara totally free to make Its choice or are Its choices totally determined by Its need to be the compassionate, just Lord? As I see it Ishwara does make sure that Its choices are consistent at least in the long term by the need to do good, and do justice. This in fact is at the heart of all religious doctrines. However, in the short term, we see no overwhelming pattern absolutely determined by goodness and justice. What we see is a mix of evil and goodness, with evil often gaining the upper hand temporarily to be subdued sooner or later by good - or at least less evil- regimes. (It is significant that in Hindu mythology the evil doers often seek and receive boons from Ishwara before using them for their evil purposes. But they are invariably destroyed later by the good and virtuous among men or directly by an incarnation of the Lord.)
Advaitins see the world as Ishwara's play and the short term vicissitudes in the battle between evil and good is the stuff of that play. Your view (- do correct me if I am not rightly understanding it-) that Ishwara's choices in this play are mathematically determined by Its goodness is a very interesting one and something that cannot be refuted. It is just that it takes away totally the freedom that I like to associate with Ishwara. Also, it has to be, I would think, a mighty complex mathematics to show up as our world.
- Raju
AND I REPLIED:
Namaste Raju,
I am glad to hear you say that we are close in our views. I agree. However, I am intrigued by your emphasis on morality in all of this. That sounds rather 'Judeo-Christian' to me, though of course all religions emphasize morality. Still, I feel that Hinduism perhaps dwells on concepts such as lila, maya and fatalism a bit more, which makes it sound like there is less divine intervention.
My view is that our suffering is somehow a necessary and 'mathematical' part of our spiritual evolution. I know I have been throwing the word 'mathematical' around rather loosely lately, but my point is that the only sense I can make out of the worldly melodrama is that somehow the very 'nature' of consciousness must follow certain laws which require this.
In other words, I don't think that even the divine can simply control us like puppets. Consciousness somehow has a certain 'structure', by its very definition or nature, and our spiritual evolution must proceed from dark to light for a reason similar to the reason that a square has four sides. Even God cannot prevent such geometrical and mathematical properties. This is all pretty vague, but it is my best answer to why an 'omnipotent' and good 'creator' could allow evil to happen. (And at the Advaitic level, there is not really a creator, as we know.)
This clashes with the old Judeo-Christian emphasis on free will, but the free will argument never really satisfied me. If the creator is omnipotent, then why can't he just 'program' us with a good free will? You might say that this programming would destroy the free will. You might have a point, but I am not convinced. I prefer the answer that there are deep mysteries about consciousness and its necessary evolution in apparently 'finite' beings such as us which we don't yet understand. At least this viewpoint is humble. (And of course, at the Advaitic level, we are not finite beings either!)
We humans could argue this forever and not really know. But I do know that my practice of Advaita has helped me. Just remaining as the witness definitely purifies consciousness, and that is what we should concentrate on, instead of pretending that we can know everything.
Thank you for a really interesting exchange and excellent contribution to my Pure Consciousness list.
Hari Om, Benjamin
NOTE: The discussion still isn't finished, but he wants to reflect on it for a while. I think this is enough for now anyway! The question is whether God has any real choice or is constrained by his perfection. Something to think about! But perhaps irrelevant to Sadhana (spiritual practice)...