The Unreal Can Cause the Real

[Guest guest]

Dennis wrote:

Quite so, but the fact remains that the bare assertions - all there is is

brahman; you are That etc - are not *derivable* by reason. We use reason to

show that such statements are not incompatible with experience; indeed they

are found ultimately to explain everything. But they begin life as

un-provable propositions. That is the point.

 

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Dear Dennis,

 

This is the source of great disputes in religion. How did the idea of God

first spring into the mind of man? Here one is talking about the bare

idea and this it is clear predates all texts whatever. As this early

wisdom came to be codified into the various scriptures then the inchoate

original concept took on more form and became Brahman, Yahweh etc. The

core issue is: does the fact that God (I use the term in a generic sense)

is beyond the senses mean that it is beyond the intellect also? Can it be

that there is such a thing as consciousness and perception provide the

initial clue or fundamental intuition that enables us to grasp the notion

of God. How could we begin to entertain it if it were not intelligible in

the first instance? Is it not the wrong approach to say that the idea of

God is purely external to our minds and unknowable to us unless mediated

by a text? Is this a similar thought to a transmission without a receiver

or that the transmission creates the receiver? Or that the transmission

is so constituted that it reaches only one special group of people?

 

Shankara uses or appears to use the rational argument known as the

Intelligent Design argument (I.D.) in his rebuttal of the Sankhya theory

of pradhana. (B.S.B. II.ii.1) He claims that the insentient pradhana as

the basis of all manifestation is not adequate to the manifest design

shown by creation. Instead we ought to believe that pradhana is under the

control of some intelligent agent.

 

If I.D. can be presented as rebuttal of the sankhya position why cannot

it also be pressed into service as a proof or argument in its own right?

There is nothing contradictory in the idea that the Vedas might be

confirmed by rational considerations.

B.S.B. II.ii.1:

" And from this latter point of view nothing is contradicted, rather the

Vedas stand vindicated, since the Vedas present a conscious entity as the

cause. Accordingly, by reason of the impossibility of design as well, the

insentient pradhana should not be inferred to be the cause of the

universe. "

 

Moreover, Shankara adds, happiness, misery and, delusion cannot be

inherent in the inert pradhana because they are of their nature mental

attributes. The inert does not give rise to the conscious. This is a

perfectly rational argument and that it has been thought to be a useful

one by others outside the Vedic fold ought not to militate against it.

 

At the end of B.S.B. II.ii.2 the causal argument for the existence of God

comes into play.

 

" Similarly it is but logical that God who is all-pervasive, the Self of

all, omniscient and, omnipotent, should be the impeller of all even though

He is himself free from any tendency to act.

Objection: Since God is one (without a second) and there is nothing else

to be impelled, the impellership itself is a fiction. (((Dennis, you

could have written that))) :-)

 

Vedantin: No, for it has been said again and again that God can be the

impeller because of an illusory association with name and form conjured up

by ignorance. Hence the existence of such tendency becomes a possibility

only if omniscient God be accepted as the cause (of creation), but not so

on the assumption of something insentient as the cause. "

 

The objection above I would say is senseless because it is like those

sort of self-referring propositions which do not go beyond themselves to

point to a state of affairs. The basis on which it asserted i.e. that the

universe is pure mithya, undermines its own value. To put it

colloquially, we are where we are and it is a pointless scruple to use an

_ontological_ critique to negate the actual.

 

Best Wishes,

Michael.

[Guest guest]

Dear Michael,

 

 

 

I thought our discussion concerned making the intellectual leap from

vyavahAra to paramArtha. You seem now to have diversified into talking about

God and creation, which is firmly at the level of vyavahAra - and I don't

really want to go there. Shankara's points that you quote relate to saguNa

brahman, Ishvara and not to the absolute reality. Although interesting (of

course), all such ideas have ultimately to be rejected in the recognition of

there being no creation at all. Maybe some others could take up your

argument if you want to continue it.

 

 

 

In the context of (what I understood to be) our original discussion,

although arguments such as intelligent design can be made to justify a

belief in a creator-god, they have no relevance to arguing a non-dual

reality. ajAtivAda is, I suggest, not something that would reasonably be

intuited, since it contradicts all of our experience.

 

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Dennis

 

 

 

advaitin [advaitin ] On Behalf

Of ombhurbhuva

Friday, August 14, 2009 5:44 PM

advaitin

The Unreal Can Cause the Real

 

 

 

<< >>

Shankara uses or appears to use the rational argument known as the

Intelligent Design argument (I.D.) in his rebuttal of the Sankhya theory

of pradhana. (B.S.B. II.ii.1) He claims that the insentient pradhana as

the basis of all manifestation is not adequate to the manifest design

shown by creation. Instead we ought to believe that pradhana is under the

control of some intelligent agent.

 

<< >>

 

At the end of B.S.B. II.ii.2 the causal argument for the existence of God

comes into play.

 

" Similarly it is but logical that God who is all-pervasive, the Self of

all, omniscient and, omnipotent, should be the impeller of all even though

He is himself free from any tendency to act.

Objection: Since God is one (without a second) and there is nothing else

to be impelled, the impellership itself is a fiction. (((Dennis, you

could have written that))) :-)

 

Vedantin: No, for it has been said again and again that God can be the

impeller because of an illusory association with name and form conjured up

by ignorance. Hence the existence of such tendency becomes a possibility

only if omniscient God be accepted as the cause (of creation), but not so

on the assumption of something insentient as the cause. "

 

<< >>