Advaita Made Easy by Dennis Waite

Author:Dennis Waite [Waite, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780991856
Publisher: NBN_Mobi_Kindle
Published: 2012-07-26T22:00:00+00:00

7

Has the universe been created?

Creation

Religions, together with those philosophies that accept the existence of a god, usually claim that God is the creator of the universe. When they use this word ‘creation’, however, what they invariably mean is that God is the intelligent cause of the universe. Indeed, probably the most commonly used argument for God is the argument from design and the metaphor often encountered is the one of the watchmaker.

When we look at the internal mechanism of a watch, it is said, the workings are so complex that it is inconceivable that they could have come together accidentally - there must be an intelligent designer. In the same way, then, since the world around us exhibits so much complexity and yet all of the various functions operate together with beauty and efficiency, there must be an intelligence behind its creation.

Philosophy differentiates the ‘intelligent cause’ as described here from the ‘material cause’. As an example a wooden table or chair has, as its intelligent cause, a carpenter (ignoring the complications of modern self-assembly furniture). But the material cause of both (table and chair, that is - not carpenter) is wood. Advaita is unique amongst philosophies in claiming that God (or more pedantically Ishvara) is the material cause as well as the intelligent cause. This follows from the earlier discussions on ‘mithya’, since we have seen that everything has Brahman (i.e. Ishvara from the perspective of vyavahara) as its ultimate substrate or dependent reality.

Of course, if you are really alert, you might at this point be asking how there can be a creation at all, since this seems to contradict the very basis of the statement made by Advaita that ‘there are not two things’. And you would be right to do so! Hopefully, this chapter will resolve such issues!

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.