Timeless Causes
It is now pertinent to observe that the notion of the world as
temporal, as contingent, as being totally dependent on a timeless cause,
described in personal or impersonal terms, recur in diverse theistic or
absolutistic soteriologies across cultures.
In the philosophical literature of Advaita Vedānta, one comes
across an in-depth analysis of such insights In order to capture its intended
meaning, note that the idea of cause acquires here a special significance. The conventional understanding of cause as
temporally preceding an effect is no longer entertained at this level of the discourse. The idea of a timeless cause is conceived
not in terms of temporal antec6denc, there is no question here of any temporal
sequence between the cause and the effect.
This is why the school of Advaita Vedānta has preferred the coinage
of the term Adhisthāna ground in order to indicate that Brahman is the
indispensable ground for the appearance of the contingent world by introducing
the doctrine of Māya. The notion
that the world is an appearance is not an empirical judgement about the world. In the Advaita vocabulary, it has a precise
meaning. The Advaita, claim that the
world has only empirical reality, is not the same as saying that it is
imaginary [alīka] or that it is pure nothing [tucca]. The thrust of Advaita thinking is to bring
out that Brahman alone has, ontological reality, it is unsublatable in three
times, i.e., it is that about which one cannot say that it is not, it was not
or it will not be. It is unchanging and
unchangeable [Aparināī/Kuţastha] . Thus, the status of the
empirical world [Vyavahāra] which is the realm of change and multiplicity
is conceptually, distinguished from that, of Being par excellence
[Paramārtha] on the one hand and the absolute naught [Pratibhāsa], on
the other hand.
In order to highlight this perception, let me read the following lines
by St. Augustine: And I beheld the
other things below Thee, and I perceived that they neither altogether are, nor
altogether are not, for they are, since they are from Thee, but are not,
because they are not, what Thou art.
For that truly is, which remains unchangeably.
Contributed by: Dr. Anindita Balslev
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