Ishwara- the All Powerful, the All-Pervasive (MTS-11: Towards A Mathematical Theory of Spirituality Based on Advaita)

[Guest guest]

Ref Pages 43-45 of http://sunyaprajna.com/Advaita/Advaita_Math.pdf

 

In our conceptual model, Ishwara is seen as exercising control over all things

and beings at all times using His Free Will, while still staying within the

bounds of the laws of Prakriti. This is possible since the laws of Parkriti are

not totally deterministic, but probabilistic.

 

Three questions arise at this time: a) Do not the probabilistic laws also

constrain Ishwara’s Free Will in some manner? b) Does not randomness contradict

the purposefulness of Ishwara’s Will? c) Where is Ishwara so that He can

control all things and beings at all times?

 

The first two questions were touched upon previously in observations posted by

Benjamin ji and deserve some detailed answers regarding the nature of randomness

and probabilistic laws.

 

Randomness and probabilities are concepts extensively applied today to solve

practical problems, yet they remain rather vague. It was Bertrand Russell I

think who quipped “Everybody talks about probability, but no body understands

it”.

 

“Observations that are random….. cannot be explained by a theory” says Dr.

Gregory Chaitin ( http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/sciamer.html ) in

an interesting paper on Randomness and Mathematical Proof. Any attempt to

explain, or attempt to postulate a causative mechanism with some predictive

value, must fail when confronted with a truly random phenomenon and therefore

such phenomena are “beyond cause.” Randomness can be also associated with

freedom since there is no underlying deterministic law to constrain it.

Interestingly, Ishwara, is also described in similar terms in many religious

traditions. He is the “Original Cause” or the “Causeless Cause” meaning He is

“beyond cause”. He is also viewed as endowed with full freedom of Will.

 

This similarity is only to be expected when we admit that it is Ishwara’s Will

which is behind events that appear as random (i.e. unexplainable) to jeevas.

God alone knows the why and wherefore of His actions, not the jeevas. There is

no reason however to conclude that Ishwara’s actions are wanton. On the

contrary, Ishwara exercises His Will while fully respecting Prakriti’s laws.

These are probabilistic laws which afford considerable freedom of choice in the

short term. Therefore there is room for Ishwara to display His universal

compassion and justice in individual instances, if He so wills. In the longer

term, a greater degree of compliance with the law is to be expected, as known

from Laws of Probability. But we note that even this is an expectation only, the

extent to which the expectation is fulfilled still depending on His Will.

 

Thus we have here a very satisfactory, workable relation between Ishwara and His

freedom of Will on the one hand, and Prakriti and Her laws on the other. For

jeevas the result is a world that is an admirable mixture of order and

uncertainty- a combination that makes for an exciting, yet manageable, life.

Without the order engendered by Her laws, life would be nightmarish, and without

the freedom of possibilities inherent in His Will, life would be dreadful with

no room for hopes and dreams. But with Ishwara and Prakriti working together,

life is beautiful, notwithstanding an occasional heartbreak.

 

Ishwara must be all pervasive and all powerful in order to control the evolution

of everything in the cosmos every single moment. Where exactly is He in order

to accomplish this enormous task? Appearing as Lord Krishna, Ishwara himself

answers this question in the Bhagavad Gita:

 

isvarah sarva-bhutaanaam hrd-dese 'rjuna tisthati

bhraamayan sarva-bhutaani yantraarudhaani maayaya

 

Seated in the heart-space of all things and beings, He, the Omniscient and

Omnipotent, controls them. The heart-space is also identified in Mandukya

Upanishad and Karika as the seat of the Prajna, the microcosmic counterpart of

Ishwara. What is even more revealing is how the Upanishad extols Prajna, the

individual in the causal state, using terms one normally reserves for Ishwara,

such as “sarveshwara and sarvajna”! The significance of this, as I see it, is

that at the causal level there is really no individuality, but only the

Totality. Stated another way, at the causal level all things and beings are

merged into one whole, with Ishwara presiding over it. Commenting on this part

of the Upanishad, Swami Krishnanandaji of The Divine Life Society observes: “The

Mandukya Upanishad seems to make no palpable distinction between the individual

and the cosmic, and it harmonises the relation between Jiva and Isvara.”

 

It is as though the space that separates individual things and beings at the

B-M-I level (i.e. the vaiswanara and taijasa level) is not there at the causal

(prajna) level. The individual entities in the cosmos appear to be far flung at

the sensory B-M-I levels, but Ishwara controls them all at the causal level as

one single entity. This should be welcome news to Quantum physicists spooked by

the specter of “entangled particles”. In the article “Entanglement: The Weirdest

Link” (http://www.biophysica.com/quantum.htm) Michael Brooks writes: “This

(entanglement) is no longer just a curiosity of the quantum world, visible only

in excruciatingly delicate experiments. Physicists now believe that entanglement

between particles exists everywhere, all the time, and have recently found

shocking evidence that it affects the wider, "macroscopic" world that we

inhabit.” In other words, entangled at the causal level, this cosmos could as

well be a single entity. Modern science appears to be approaching a view that

the seer of Mandukya Upanishad envisioned long ago.

 

To sum up, the cosmos is seen as one single pulsating entity, where events,

controlled by a compassionate and just Ishwara, unfold in unpredictable ways,

yet remaining within Prakriti’s laws that give a reassuring measure of

orderliness to the proceedings.

 

Hari Om!

- Raju Chidambaram

[Guest guest]

Hi Raju,

 

I finally got around to answering your posts.

My month-long India trip is over, the travelogue

is written, and I have caught up on other matters.

Now I can resume reading your thread here.

 

Actually, I will answer your last three posts:

MTS-9 of Jan 12, MTS-10 of Jan 18 and

MTS-11 of Jan 27.

 

First note that I have added some enhancements

to the parallel blog at

 

http://advaitamath.blogspot.com/

 

There are now some figures from your report,

as well as some links. OK, on to my comments

(which I also posted on the blog):

 

 

MTS-9

 

OK, the key assumption here is that there is an

element of literal truth in the scriptural statement

that a "day of Brahma" is equal to 4.32 billion

human-years. After all, if the scriptures are going

to put a number to it, why not take it literally?!

 

So my question is: Do we look to Brahma like tiny

little insects zipping around at extremely fast speeds?

This reminds me of a story where a man's sense of

time is somehow speeded up so that everything

around him looks like very slow motion. People

are practically frozen. Likewise, his voice sounds

like an insect's to them, and so on.

 

Furthermore, one may wonder if it is proper to

allow Brahma to have his "senses" limited or

constrained in any way. I'm not sure how Brahma

relates to the more Judeo-Christian notion of God

(who is also a creator God by the way), but the latter

is supposed to be beyond time in some sense. I

know that Brahman dwells in eternity, but does

Brahma dwell in time? I guess so, based on the

scriptural statement.

 

Anyhow, I am glad we go to increasingly nice

worlds like Brahmalok before attaining Moksha.

We're always warned about the dangers of

attachment, but if we can avoid attachment, why

not be in a nice "place" before being promoted

to "no place". :-)

 

 

 

MTS-10

 

In Fig 8, the wave GG' collapses into the definite

state G as Ishwara crosses it, according to

Ishwara's will:

 

(i) Perhaps the definite state should be called

G*, since G is also used to denote the arc GG'

of possible states.

 

(ii) Before, when you said that GG' represents

the possible states until crossed by Ishwara, I

associated a different possible state with the

different points of the arc GG'. Then, since each

point has coordinates, I asked about the meaning

of those. This was wrong, and thus I was confused.

 

Actually, the entire arc GG' represents the same

event. This is a crucial point which you should

perhaps clarify even further, since it is natural

to associate an event with a point rather than with

an entire arc. (I was trying to imagine some kind

of space-time diagram such as commonly used

in physics.)

 

This event is a collection of possibilities until

Ishwara crosses it, then it collapses to a definite

event. Different jeevas do not experience this

event until they cross the arc GG' at some point.

When a jeeva crosses it, the horizontal axis then

(and only then) acquires a meaning: it is the amount

of time that seems to have elapsed for that particular

jeeva since the previous event. The lower the slope

of the jeeva's path, the more time seems to have

elapsed. This is the only meaning for that coordinate.

It does not have any meaning until a jeeva crosses it,

and thus I was confused.

 

Do I understand now?

 

(iii) It seems as though you are saying that Ishwara

(or Brahmaji) will cross GG' before any other jeeva,

since his slope is greater, thus ensuring that he

"controls" the world. If this is indeed what you imply,

I think it is an incorrect interpretation of your own

theory. This theory speaks only of "psychological"

time, or how long seems to transpire between events

to different jeevas. This is a purely subjective

impression, and there is no point saying that an event

occurs for Ishwara "before" it occurs for another jeeva.

He will control it no matter what, and all you are saying

is that the intervals between events seem to be of

longer duration for less enlightened jeevas. In other

words, there is no "cosmic time" external to all jeevas,

including Ishwara, that would permit us to say that

event X occurs for jeeva A "before" it occurs for jeeva

B. I hope I am clear.

 

Well, that's enough for now. Your numerical coincidence

regarding Plank's constant is interesting but not

essential to your argument.

 

 

MTS 11

 

You are right that randomness can be

perplexing, especially with unique events

like evolution or the big bang. When flipping

a coin, the meaning is clearer, since one

can imagine flipping many coins and saying

something about the distribution of outcomes.

But one could argue that a question such as

"What is the probability of the Big Bang?" is

essentially meaningless, since it happens only

once. The same is true for the evolution of the

universe, which is in fact what you are talking

about.

 

Actually, I think that the very concept of

randomness is meaningless for Ishwara, if he

foresees everything, as Hinduism and other

religions seem to think. Randomness only has

meaning in the context of our own ignorance as

finite jeevas. It does not affect Ishwara in the

slightest and is irrelevant to him. This is a powerful

argument in favor of Einstein's rejection of quantum

physics ("God does not play dice") provided you

believe in God or Ishwara in the first place.

 

So in this sense, I suppose I must reject your notion

of possible states in the Universal Mind. There are

"possibilities" only in the sense that there are scenarios

one could contemplate, but Ishwara always knew what

would actually happen.

 

Also, I reject miracles. Why should some people get

lucky because they managed to pull on Ishwara's heart

strings, while other equally innocent people suffer anyway?

Ultimately, I don't believe that people or jeevas are even

responsible for their actions, but we should pretend that

we are anyway, as a kind of edifying charade.

 

Hopes and dreams are only meaningful to the ignorant

jeeva who cannot foresee the future. They are purely a

kind of drug to keep him going but have no real meaning

in terms of actual events. Those are determined since

before the beginning of time. Just as Ramesh Balsekar says,

but other more sentimental Advaitins cannot bear to

imagine. On that happy note, I end.

 

(I see you also said something about "heart-space" but

I have to go to bed. Maybe another comment tomorrow?)

 

Hari Om!

Ben