Fwd: Simultaneous creation

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advaitin , Ananda Wood <awood wrote:

 

Namaste,

 

On the subject of drishti-srishti-vada, as raised by Shri Subbu,

Michael wrote (subject 'clarification', message #34034 of 19 Nov):

 

" The implication of what you write here is that there was no world

prior to there being consciousness of it, that there was no world

prior to the arrival of the organic. In other words that what the

best scientific minds have shown, namely that the arrival of human

consciousness is the end product of a long chain of evolution, is

just not true. You can't be serious. "

 

The whole point of the drishti-shristi-vada is that it questions our

habitual assumption of a world which has been created in the course

of time. In fact, this assumption is a logical confusion.

 

Logically, what we call 'time' is part of our conception of a

space-time world: a world made up of objects that are moved and

changed in space, in the course of passing time. As the world is

created, time as its part is created along with it. 'Time' is here

thought created in the course of time. Our thinking is accordingly

confused, because it plainly contradicts itself. It says that time

is created in the course of its own passing. It is here

surreptitiously assumed that 'time' exists prior to its own

existence, in a world of which this 'time' is just a part.

 

The only way out of this muddle is to ask more carefully what's

meant by the words 'time' and 'prior'. In fact, each of these words

is used in two, quite different ways, which need to be

distinguished.

 

One way occurs in connection with the space-time world, where

objects and events can co-exist in space-time structures. Here, time

is an additional co-ordinate, which must be used along with the

co-ordinates of space, in order to account for change and movement.

In a world of moving objects and of changing happenings, the time

coordinate enables us to specify just where an object or event is

located and how it relates to other objects or events, in the

space-time structure of the world.

 

When we speak of time like this, as an additional co-ordinate of

space-time structure, this so-called 'time' is just a part of

structured space. What we now call 'space-time' is still conceived

as a kind of space, elaborated by an additional dimension of

co-ordinated structure. What's here called time is still treated as

a mere dimension, of co-ordinated measurement in structured space

where different things can co-exist.

 

In this reduction of time to space, we miss a further meaning that

is more essentially conveyed by the word 'time'. In that meaning,

time is a succession of passing states that never co-exist. Thus

conceived, time has no structure in itself. Where space has

co-existing points enabling structures to be formed, time has only

passing moments, each of which is found experienced in the singular,

as just one state of passing time.

 

When the word 'time' is used in that second sense, we are no longer

speaking of a structured world made up of various different things.

Instead, we speak of an evolving process, through which the world

appears. In this process, passing time has no structure in itself.

Time itself has only process, found displaying always just one

single state at each present moment.

 

When 'time' is taken in its first sense, as a co-ordinate dimension

of space-time structure, we get what Shri Subbu [in message #34026,

18 Nov] called " srishti-drishti-vAda (creation prior to cognition) " ,

because we here assume that the knowing or the cognition is an

instrumental action done by a created observer in a differentiated

world.

 

By contrast, when 'time' is taken in its second sense, as a

procession of replacing states, we get what Shri Subbu called " the

drishti-srishti-vAda, in which any object, be it the entire world,

must be deemed to arise co-terminously with the cognition pertaining

to it -- drishti-sama-samayA srishti " . Here, creation is what Ramana

Maharshi called 'yugapat srishti'. It is an instantaneous creation

that takes place at each moment of experience, with some passing

appearance of an object created simultaneously with the entire world

of which the object is understood to be a part.

 

In that simultaneous creation, some perceived or thought or felt

object arises implicitly together with a perceiving or thinking or

feeling act of knowing it as part of a larger world. Thus, an

apparently known object and its containing world are jointly created

and destroyed, in each passing moment that appears and disappears in

time.

 

Corresponding to these two senses of the word 'time', there are two

senses of the word 'prior'. In the first sense, where time is

conceived as part of world, 'priority' is merely temporal. Here,

prior means 'earlier in changing time'. It is this temporal sense of

priority that Michael uses, in his objection to Shri Subbu's account

of drishti-srishti-vada.

 

But in the context of drishti-srishti-vada, where cognition is taken

to be 'prior' to creation, the sense of the word 'prior' is not

temporal. Instead, it is logical. In the temporal sense of the word

'prior', Michael is of course quite right to object to a statement

which says that 'there was no world prior to there being

consciousness of it'. But this statement does not correctly describe

the drishti-srishti-vada position. To describe that position

correctly, 'there was' must be changed to 'there is' and 'prior'

should be clarified by changing it to 'logically prior'. So the

statement should be that 'there *is* no world *logically* prior to

there being consciousness of it'.

 

When the word 'prior' is thus used in its logical sense, it simply

means that whenever we consider a changing world, we inherently

imply a consciousness of this same world, including the arrival of

organic life and of human consciousness as the end product of a long

chain of evolution.

 

In this way, consciousness must logically come first, before any

conception of a world where consciousness is supposed to be absent

before it arrives in the form of organic bodies with sense organs

and minds that we perceive as similar to ours. Such a supposition is

a self-contradictory and somewhat parochial confusion, logically, no

matter what may be said on the authority of any 'best scientific

minds'.

 

By considering that logical priority of consciousness, Advaita comes

to the ajati-vada conclusion: that there is in truth no birth of any

changing time, and thus no true creation of a world at all.

 

At every moment of all time, what's created and destroyed shows

nothing other than its logically prior consciousness. From just that

consciousness, what's created rises up into appearance. And this

appearance is immediately destroyed, as it is taken back into that

underlying consciousness.

 

Just that same consciousness is present always, through all

appearances that come and go. It's that which knows all their

comings and their goings. It is their one reality, shown by each one

of them. It is expressed in each appearance; and it is quietly

revealed, as unmanifest and unexpressed, in each disappearance of

what has appeared.

 

So that which seems created is no more, nor any less, than that

which always is and which always stays unchanged. All creation is

appearance only. So also all destruction that appears. In reality

itself, there is no creation and no change. Its very being is a

knowing in identity, of self that is identical with what it knows.

 

There is thus a progression of three vadas: srishti-drishti,

(creation prior to seeing), drishti-srishti (seeing prior to

creation) and ajati (no birth of creation at all). The first gives

temporal priority, to a created world of structured space that's

seen to change in course of time. The second is concerned with a

logical priority, of consciousness that is implied in the seeing of

creation at each passing moment in the process of time's change. And

the third investigates an ultimate priority, of knowing in identity

where only unborn truth is found.

 

These three vadas are not so much arguments as stages of progressive

questioning, in search of truth where arguments have so thoroughly

ruled themselves out that they aren't needed any more.

 

Ananda

 

--- End forwarded message ---