Ben ji's questions regarding MTS-9,10, and 11

[Guest guest]

Ben:

 

In a recent posting you raised several questions regarding MTS-9,10, and 11.

Hope you will find the response below helpful:

 

1) Does Brahma dwell in time? Yes, he does, as opposed to Ishwara who is

eternal. Brahmaji’s “life” is supposed to be a finite 100 Brahma-years, which is

a few hundred trillion human years. This is long, but finite nevertheless. The

universe of which he is the Brahmaji also ends after 100 Brahma-years. Where

does the jiva known as Brahmaji go at that time? I suppose that jeeva gratefully

accepts retirement from the headaches of managing a universe and merges back

with Brahman. Others in the list who have are better read in our puraanaas may

wish to add to this.

 

2) The equivalent to the Judeo-Christian concept of God , I think, is Ishwara

and not Brahma. Brahma may be more like Abraham (-and not just in the way the

two names are spelled, though that is rather uncanny-) who, like Brahma, is the

“pitamaha”- grandsire of all mankind.

 

3) Regarding Fig 8 and your two suggestions: You are right on both counts. I

hope to have the paper revised in the coming months taking into account the

feedback I am getting. By the way, I plan to present the paper at the Houston

WAVES conference and am now working on the presentation.

 

4) In point (iii), you have raised a question which is not completely resolved

in my own mind yet. If I recall right, in MTS-10, I use the words to the effect

that “no jeeva experiences a state of the world before Brahmaji experiences the

creation of that state”. In terms of cosmic time, the two events are

simultaneous, but in terms of experienced time, Brahmaji – by virtue of the fact

that the passage of cosmic time is experienced by Him at a vastly faster rate-

gets to experience the event “first”. This is not unlike similar examples you

find in Relativity Theory when dealing with relativity of time. Whether this

makes experienced time “psychological” or something else is what I am not clear

about at this time. Extending this a bit further, we see that a fully realized

jeeva who is still awake to the O-E-T (“on the vertical axis”) has, or can have,

the experience of everything simultaneously. He/She is a seer-of-three-times

“trikaalajnani” and ahead of even Brahmaji.

 

5) Regarding Randomness and Ishwara: Everybody’s concept of Ishwara is

different. So, in our conceptual model, we should assume the very minimum

necessary about the nature of Ishwara. What we have assumed is that Ishwara,

dwelling in the heart-space of all things and beings, decides their

moment-to-moment evolution. We can speculate further whether or not this

evolution is “predetermined” by Ishwara so that there is no randomness or

“possibilities” from Ishwara’s point of view. But uncertainty and randomness are

“real” for jeevas and our “vyaavahaarik” model must acknowledge that. However,

even within our model, Ishwara - being the very personification of the vertical

axis or the axis of Infinite Good- , can foresee not only all future

possibilities for the cosmos but also His/Her own decisions in every instance.

Ishwara, unlike Brahma ji is truly beyond time. This might be one way to keep

“pre-determination” from Ishwara’s point of view in the model, while allowing

the randomness apparent to jeevas.

 

6) Miracles are the staple of almost all religions. Our model permits

“miracles” if we define a miracle as the choice of a state for the world that is

an “outlier” (say beyond the 6 or 12 sigma limits). We cannot complain or second

guess Ishwara as to when He/She should perform miracles or to benefit which

jeevas. To do so, as I see it, is to take away from Ishwara’s freedom of will

and to attribute to jeevas a power they do not have.

 

Hari Om!

 

- Raju Chidambaram