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UNRAVELING UNCERTAINTY: An Advaitic ParadigmSummary
: Science has now resigned itself to the fundamentally uncertain nature of ourworld but does not offer any meaningful insight into the nature of that uncertainty.Focused as it is more or less exclusively on the quantum behavior of elementary particles,Science also has not fully recognized what is arguably the more important unpredictableelement affecting everyday life: the uncertainty surrounding human decision-making.In this paper, the author turns to well known principles in Advaita to suggest a paradigmthat casts vasanas as the forces of nature responsible for change and uncertainty. Ithighlights interesting similarities between the “collapse of the wave function” familiar tophysicists and the process leading to human decisions. The paradigm suggests an answerto the question: Is Ishwara bound by Nature’s laws? The paper postulates a conceptualmodel based on Advaita that includes matter and mind, certainty and uncertainty, andNature and God. Finally it touches upon the significance of uncertainty in the Lord’screation.
INTRODUCTION
We start with a simple story.A man and wife, following their annual Deepavali tradition, enter a fashionable sareestore to buy a silk saree for the wife. This couple is a rarity in that husband is wise andsensitive to every wish of his wife while the wife accepts her husband’s judgment withoutreservation. At the saree shop, the sales assistant spreads before them dozens of dazzlingsarees that are the rage this year. Husband listens attentively to his wife as she examineseach saree and comments variously:“
I really like this green one. It is gorgeous and it feels so nice to touch. Too bad,because I already have too many in green”.“This blue looks great too, especially the border. May be I should get this. What do you think?”“Look at this one! Wonderful design. And the red color is so pretty. I bet nobody I know will have one like this. But the price!”
After about half an hour and two rounds of complimentary soft drinks, the husbandknows the time has arrived when his wife turns to him holding several sarees in her handand asks:
“Well, what do you suggest? I can’t make up my mind among these. Which oneshould I buy?”
The husband, having in the meantime judged her inclinations reasonably well, makes thechoice. She is relieved that a decision is made and is also happy at the prospect of wearing her new saree. Satisfied, husband and wife return home from a happy shoppingtrip.True, this is not a very exciting story. Its purpose however is to suggest a paradigmwithin the structure of Vedanta to explain one of the greatest mysteries of life:Uncertainty.
THE ADVAITIC VISION OF THE WORLD:
OF GOD, BY GOD, FOR GOD
Whether it is science or Vedanta, its world-view must account for four fundamental facts:a.
A world (of gross matter and subtle mind stuff) is experiencedb.
This world is in constant changec.
The changes are unpredictabled.
There is knowledge of the above factsThe world-view of Advaita can be summarized thus: Brahman alone is the sole andsupreme Reality; It is however Unmanifest. Brahman, in Its role as Ishwara, the creator,wields the illusive power of Maya to manifest Itself as Prakriti, this ever changing world.All aspects of the phenomenal world are explained in Advaita in terms of the threeconcepts: the unmanifest Brahman and its manifestations as Ishwara and Prakriti. Indeedthe Advaitic vision of the world can be summarized thus:
The world is
made
of God
(namely, Prakriti), directed
by God
(namely, Ishwara),
for
the enjoyment of
God
(namely, Brahman having “entered” the individual creatures of Prakriti)
.
“Made of Prakriti
”
: This is explained in texts such as Tatvabodh. Prakriti is the wombof creation for everything from the five great elements to gross objects, the subtle mindand intellect. Unlike Brahman and Ishwara, which are unitary and part-less, Prakriti ismanifold consisting of countless individuals of different forms, names and gunas. Everyindividual entity in Prakriti has one or both of gross matter (
B
, the body) and subtle mind(
M-I
, the mind-intellect complex). Entities that possess only gross matter can be referredto as “(inert) things” and those which have M and I (with or without Body) as “beings”.The agents or forces of change in Prakriti are the
vasanas
, which act on things and beingsof the world, causing them to move constantly from one state to another. The vasanas arealso manifold: The set of vasanas that affect each individual thing or being is generallyunique to that individual, causing it to behave in its own unique ways. All physical forcesof nature known to science can be considered as vasanas affecting inert matter.
“Directed by Ishwara
”
: Ishwara, the Lord, has command over Prakriti and over thehappenings of this world. How Ishwara and Prakriti together control the world is atheme taken up for discussion later in this article. In the course of this discussion we willalso answer a related question:
Is Ishwara subject to Prakriti’s laws? If “yes”, how doesthat make Ishwara the Lord of the world? On the other hand if the answer is “no”, howdo Ishwara and Prakriti work together without conflict?“
For the Enjoyment of
”
: Brahman (or more specifically the Consciousness aspect of Brahman), enchanted as it were by Its own creation, “enters” or “identifies” with thebeings in the Prakriti to give rise to sentient jeevas. One may represent this symbolicallyasJeeva
i
= Brahman + Prakriti
i
where the “+” sign denotes identification of Brahman with the “i-th” being in Prakriti
1
.Every Jeeva is thus a complex entity that has the same real part (Brahman) and animaginary part (namely, our individual
B
ody-
M
ind-
I
ntellect). As the above symbolicrepresentation indicates, the B-M-I is unreal from the point of view of Brahman, but quitereal for the Jeeva. The
chit
or consciousness aspect of Brahman “reflecting” on M and Iof the being gives rise to the illusion of a sentient, knowing, individual “enjoying” (i.e.experiencing) the world.
2
Brahman, the
Satchidananda
, permeates the creation. The
sat
aspect lends materialexistence to things and beings, and the
Chit
aspect manifests as knowledge andexperience of the world. What about Ananda? There are suggestions in our scripturesthat vasanas are an expression of the Ananda aspect of Brahman. In other words, Anandacan be viewed as the primal force behind all manifest forces in creation and evolution.This in a nutshell is how Advaita explains the world, the forces that change it, andknowledge there is of the world. There remains however the mystery of Uncertainty yetto be addressed.
UNCERTAINTY IS OMNIPRESENT
Uncertainty’s reach is all encompassing; behavior of both matter and mind areunpredictable. Theory and experiments of modern physics confirm the fundamentallyunpredictable nature of matter. In the absence of a witnessing observer, matter “exists”,as it were, merely as an ethereal, abstract cloud of all states it can possibly be in. Whenbrought under conscious observation, the cloud condenses to one of those states. Thestate into which it will condense cannot be predicted in advance, but one can only specifymathematically the probabilities for different states via the so-called “wave function”.Uncertainty is noticeably significant in the behavior of individual elementary particles of which all matter is composed. When the particles aggregate to form larger structures, theuncertainty diminishes in its relative importance and, while theoretically still present, isless of a problem. This fact is of enormous importance: life’s transactions will be
1
The bulk of the body of spiritual teachings in Vedanta, and to a degree in all religions, has to dowith the reverse process of how a Jeeva may gain release from B-M-I identification and realizeBrahman:Jeeva
i
– Prakriti
i
= Brahmanwhere the symbol “–” signifies the process of jeeva’s dissociation from B-M-I through one ormore of the yogas
2
Knowing and actively experiencing are two aspects of the sentient life of a jeeva. One way to explain theVedantic view of these phenomena is by borrowing an analogy from communications technology. PureConsciousness reflects off the
satwic
(steady, un-agitated) intellect. This reflected light issues out as asteady beam to illuminate the objects around us. We may call this as the beam of awareness to distinguishit from Pure Consciousness. The beam of awareness is modulated by the objects (-similar to signalsmodifying a carrier wave-) and received back by the M-I at which time we become aware of them. Objectsso perceived are actively experienced when the Jeeva reacts to the objects in ways dictated by its vasanas.This reaction can be at the body level or M-I level or both.
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