God and Good & the Evil

Ruvy, a fellow blogger friend from Desiciritcs.org has discussed the existence of Good and Evil in this world and how do the Jewish and Hindu religious beliefs reconcile.  More importantly, in my view it all should be viewed in the spiritual exploratory context!  Here is a continuation of our discussion on an earlier post on Open Source Spirituality

The concept of G_d being “different from the creation is also a very popular concept in Vedic traditions.  There are primarily two basic traditions – Duality and Non-duality in the spiritual philosophy.

The Dualists have many different takes – but two popular ones are:

1. There is a Universal Consciousness (also called Purush or Atma) and the “Mind-stuff” (or creation) (also called Prakriti).  While Universal Consciousness is the Awareness and alive, the Mind-stuff is dumb and lacks awareness.  The creation is sustained because of Awareness of the consciousness puts in awareness in the dumb creative material.
2. Now, some of the dualists could not take this.  So, they added the third element – God.  They say that Universal Consciousness or Atma (Purush) is different from God (or Parm-atma – Perfect soul).

The Non-dualists believe that everything in this creation is inherently the same primordial stuff – energy.  Which is also borne to be true from scientific research.  At the basic level, sub atomic level, there is no difference between a table and a horse.

Electrons and below are all waves.  Non-dualists believe that the creation is like a Wave in the Ocean.  Just as wave is no different from the ocean – although it appears to be so.. it seems to be “created” and “subsides”.

But only an ignorant would say that a wave was “created”.  Everything is the manifestation of that primordial energy – which was there before “Big bang” and after that..  and the many Big Bangs.  The process of contraction and expansion continues ad infinitum.

As Swami Vivekananda has observed very sagaciously, that the word for Creation is not there in Vedic literature.  Srishti – which has been used means “projection” or manifestation.  Let us understand how the world is a “projection” as opposed to reality:

Wave collapse experiments showed that the act of observation by an observer ultimately resulted in the collapse of a wave – with infinite character – into a particle called electron on a screen (finite existence).  Hence, they said “Observer created his own reality”.  That ONE finite possibility is NOT the only one.  Somehow the observation only chose “a” data point amongst the infinite possibilities within the wave, that was the electron!

Neumann came and said well, if the observed is a wave collapse, then what about the observer?  Observer in this case is nothing more than his “thought” (or mind).  So, if electron is a wave collapse, so should be the measuring observer?  There was no real answer to this question in Quantum Science.  There are postulates.  But no answer.  The answer really lies in Vedic thought.

Vedanta says that the just as the existence is a wave collapse – illusionary choice made by the collections of “souls”, similarly, thoughts (or mind and indeed the “souls” themselves) are a wave collapse!

The sequence is clear – A finite creation is really not creation but a projection of the thoughts that are the souls.   And the thoughts (or souls) are but a projection of the Universal “Observer” or Consciousness.

The only experience that you and I can have where we can comprehend this concept is the dream.  Just as the dream looks very real.  And the Ruvy the Dreamed seems to be stressed, happy, jumping, laughing; “he” is really no different from Ruvy the Dreamer!  Similarly, Observer- the-Ruvy is no different from Observer-the-Consciousness.

Just as when Ruvy-the-Dreamed realizes that he is no different from Ruvy-the-Dreamer, the Dream ends.. similarly, the creation-dream ends when Observer-the-Ruvy realizes that he is no different from Observer-the-Consciousness.

That is the final conclusion of Vedanta.