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Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s16: XXV The Objective Approach: Space, Time and Cause

Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s16

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XXV The Objective Approach: Space, Time and Cause

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Dissatisfaction with the first view of things is the mother of all metaphysics. While common sense accepts the surface phenomena as real, reflection asks whether the first view is to be regarded as the final one. To discriminate the real from the unreal, the eternal from the transitory, is the chief function of philosophy. At a time when the problem of religion was formulated in terms of the question whether God exists, Śaṁkara said that the chief problem related to the real as opposed to the existent. That which does not exist may be real, while that which does may not be so; for the real it is impossible to exist. This distinction is the justification of *metaphysics* as distinct from physics, and pervades all philosophical thinking, Eastern as well as Western. The "matter" of the Milesians, the "elements" of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, the "numbers" of Pythagoras, the "atoms" of Leucippus and Democritus, the "ideas" of Plato, and the "entelechies" of Aristotle, represent the results of the search for the real behind the appearances. The Middle Ages were busy with the problem of essence versus existence. Descartes and Spinoza were obsessed by it. Wolff and Kant changed the terms and opposed the noumenon to the phenomenon. Hegel distinguished being from existence. Modern scientists consider that the things we perceive are phenomena of the real, which is electric energy. Though there are far-reaching differences among these thinkers, the persistent common element is the distinction of reality into a true self-existent and an apparent derived one.

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For Śaṁkara, philosophy is an exposition of the eternal nature of reality or the innermost essence of the world. It is *Brahmavidyā*. For him the existent is not the real. The happening of an event is one thing; the attribution of value to it another. The fact that we perceive a thing does not mean that it is true. If all that occurs or that we perceive were true, then there could not be a false experience. Even deceptive dreams are events of an inner life. As mere happenings, all experiences are on the same level, are neither true nor false.¹ Logic regards those things as true which are open to the observation of every intelligence, and those as false which are purely private. Śaṁkara takes up the central principles of experience, and declares that whatever is bound by space, time and cause cannot be real. Our experience has space for its general form, but the real is non-spatial and indivisible. For whatever is spatial is divisible, and the latter is always a produced effect and not a reality which is unproduced and indivisible and therefore non-spatial.² The universality (vibhutva) of space is only relative. Whatever is limited in space is limited in time also.³ Time has an inherent tendency to pass beyond itself, though it can never do so. It is real in the world of experience.⁴ Within the world of experience time has universal scope. But the unending duration of the world is not self-sufficient. The temporal is not the real.

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¹ Cp. Bradley: "That I find something in existence, in the world or in myself, shows that this something exists, and it cannot show more. . . The given, of course, is given; it must be recognised and it cannot be ignored. But between recognising a datum and receiving blindly its content as reality is a very wide interval" (*Appearance and Reality*, pp. 206-207).

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² See S.B., ii. 3. 7.

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³ Yad dhi loka iyattāparicchinnaṁ vastu ghaṭādi tad antavad dṛṣṭam (S.B., ii. 2. 41).

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⁴ Some of the Purāṇas regard time as eternal, Prakṛtiḥ puruṣaś caiva nityau kālaś ca sattama (*Viṣṇu Purāṇa*); but, as Vidyāraṇya observes, the viewpoint of the Purāṇas is that of the empirical world. Purāṇas—yāvidyā dṛṣṭiḥ.

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Since causality is the central category of experience, Śaṁkara subjects it to a penetrating criticism intended to show the thoroughly unsatisfactory nature of the concept. That events are interconnected in a system is the assumption of common sense and science.

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Śaṁkara criticises the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika view that the effect is something not contained in the cause. He argues that the effect must exist before its manifestation as the cause; for where a thing is not already present, it cannot arise. Oil cannot be pressed out of sand. If the effect were not prefigured in the cause, no amount of activity could bring it forth from the cause. All that the agent does is to transform the cause into the form of the effect. If the effect were not in existence before its manifestation, then the activity of the agent respecting it would be without an object. If we regard the effect as an extension beyond itself of the cause which is inherent in it, then it means that the effect is there already and is not freshly brought out. To the objection that if the effect exists in the cause, the activity of the causal agent is purposeless, Śaṁkara says in reply that the activity of the agent "may be looked upon as having a purpose in so far as it arranges the causal substance in the form of the effect." Cause and effect are continuous, *i.e.* there is no lapse of time in which the cause persists unchanged. For if the cause could persist like this for some time unchanged and then suddenly change, there must be a reason for this sudden change which we do not know. The cause, therefore, is said to change continuously into the effect. If causation is continuous, then cause and effect are not two distinct things, and we cannot speak of one becoming the other.

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It is said that the cause has in it a certain reaching forth¹ (atiśaya) towards the effect, a power by which it brings the effect into manifestation. Śaṁkara says: "If by atiśaya you understand the antecedent condition of the effect, you abandon the doctrine that the effect does not exist in the cause. If by it you mean a certain power of the cause assumed with the object of accounting for the fact, that only one determined effect springs from the cause, you must admit that the power can determine the particular effect only if it is neither other (than cause and effect) nor non-existent; for if it were either, it would not be different from anything else which is either non-existent or other than cause and effect (and then it will not be able to produce the particular effect). It follows that that power is identical with the self of the cause and the effect is identical with the self of that power." Again, the cause does not merely precede the effect but makes it occur. Unless the cause persists in the effect, the latter cannot be perceived. Clay continues in the vessel and the threads in the cloth. Cause and effect are not two different things which can be seen independent of each other like horse and cow. The difference between the effect before manifestation and after is a relative one.

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The cause and the effect represent two phases of one thing and are really of one nature.² It is said that two things cannot be of the same nature, when their forms are altered by manifestation and dissolution. Śaṁkara says that this contention is absurd. "Manifestation, like the springing of plants from seeds, is only a becoming visible of what was already existent, conditioned by the accumulation of like particles; and in the same way dissolution is a becoming invisible, caused by the disappearance of these same particles. If we were to recognise a transition from non-existence to existence in them and from existence to non-existence, then the embryo would be other than the subsequently born man, the youth would be other than the greybeard he becomes, and the father of the one would not be the father of the other."³ A thing is not changed by a change in outward appearance. Devadatta is the same whether he opens his arms or folds them. "Substances themselves persist, e.g. milk through its existence as sour milk, etc. They take the name of effect, and we cannot think of the effect as different from the cause even if we tried for a hundred years.

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As it is the original cause which, up to the last effect, appears in the form of this or that effect like an actor in all possible parts, it is thereby logically proved that the effect exists before its manifestation and is identical with the cause."¹ Śaṁkara illustrates his view by the example of the cloth, and argues that so long as the cloth is rolled up, we cannot see whether it is a cloth or something else, and even if it be seen its length and breadth are unknown, and when it is unrolled we see what it is as well as its length and breadth. Since the rolled up and the unrolled cloths are not different, so are cause and effect not different.² A substance does not forfeit its nature and become another substance by appearing under a different aspect. All change is change of and in something. A mere succession of disconnected contents held together by no common nature is no change at all. All that happens is a change of form. The continuity of the substance of milk in the curds, of the seed in the tree, is to be allowed whether it is visible as in the former instance or invisible as in the latter case. It may even be said that the cause is the only reality and the effects are mere appearances.³ Śaṁkara adopts the theory that cause and effect are not different.⁴ He reduces the transitions from causes to effects, which underlie the entire dynamic evolution of reality to a static relation of sequence characteristic of certain types of logical and theoretic connection.⁵

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¹ S.R., ii. 1. 18.

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² S.B., ii. 1. 17.

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³ S.B., ii. 1. 18; D.S.V., pp. 258-259.

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¹ S.B., ii. 1. 18.

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² S.B., ii. 1. 19.

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³ Ibid.

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⁴ Kāryakāraṇābheda, or tādātmya, or ananyatva. See S.B., ii. 1. 14; i. 4. 14; and Gauḍapāda’s Kārikā, iii. 15. Sureśvara’s Vārttika, p. 258.

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⁵ Some scientists of the present day dispense with dynamic concepts like force and energy, and are content with descriptive formulæ devoid of any implication of ultimate causal explanation.

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Causal explanation cannot be complete. There is an indefinite number of terms before and after any given member of the series. Every event points back to the conditions out of which it has arisen. To say that A is the cause of B is not to explain B.⁶ To postulate a first cause is arbitrary, since it would be to assume a beginning for the causal series, a beginning for time. Either the first cause has a previous cause or else the whole causal scheme is illogical. But if there is no first cause, the causal explanation is inadequate. We are obliged to break up the continuity of nature into past, present and future. What comes to us as an unbroken stream is made into a discontinuous series. We begin with one event A, followed by another B, between which we try to institute a causal connection. At best the category of causality can explain phenomena only so long as we look upon them as completely determined by their relations to each other, without reference to the ultimate principle which is not itself one of the phenomena determined. To this is to be added that causality is a relation and all relations are ultimately unintelligible. If the causal rule were ultimate, then the causal chain could not be abruptly snapped at any stage. But the scriptures assure us that we can get out of its sway.¹

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⁶ Cp. Campbell: "The use of the causal relation in a law is a confession of incomplete knowledge" (Physics. The Elements, p. 67).

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¹ Śaṃkara raises the question as to how the effect, which is a substance consisting of parts, is said to abide in its cause, *i.e.* the material parts of which it consists. Does it abide in all the parts taken together or in each particular part? “If you say that it abides in all the parts together, it follows that the whole as such cannot be perceived, since it is impossible that all the parts should be in contact with the organs of perception. . . Nor can it be said that the whole is apprehended through some of the parts only, since manyness, which abides in all its substrates together, is not apprehended so long as only some of these substrates are apprehended. If it is assumed that the whole abides in all the parts by the mediation of intervening aggregates of parts, then we should have to assume other parts in addition to the primary originative parts of the whole in order that, by means of those other parts, the whole could abide in the primary parts. . . The sword, for example, pervades the sheath by means of parts different from the parts of the sheath. This leads to infinite regress, since in order to explain how the whole abides in certain given parts we should always have to assume further parts. If we adopt the second alternative of the whole abiding in each particular part . . . several wholes would result. If the opponent rejoins that the whole may be fully present in each part, as the generic character of the cow is fully present in each individual cow, we say that the generic attributes of the cow are visibly perceived in each individual cow, but the whole is not thus perceived in each particular part. If the whole were fully present in each part, the result would be that the whole would produce its effects indifferently with any of its parts. A cow, for instance, would give milk from her horns or her tail. But such things are not seen to take place.” For a criticism of the *samavāya* relation binding cause and effect see S.B., ii. 1. 18.

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Gauḍapāda’s arguments² are approved by Śaṃkara. Since cause and effect are identical, change and causation are only appearances. Since cause is rooted in the very organisation of our intellect, we are obliged to use the causal category of the determination of events by antecedent ones. “The reason for assuming the non-difference of cause and effect is the fact that the understanding is affected by cause and effect jointly."'¹ Commenting on it, Ānandagiri says: "We assume the ground of cause and effect not merely on the ground of the actual existence of one thing depending on that of another, but on the additional ground of the mental existence, the consciousness of the one not being possible without the consciousness of another." If we state the causal principle in such a way as to avoid self-contradiction, we find that it has to be modified until it becomes one with the principle of identity, when it is no longer of any service for the purposes of science and common sense. When it is formulated truly, it is useless; when it is useful, it is not true.

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² See S.B. on *Kārikā*, iv. 11–20; iv. 40; also S.B. on Bṛh. Up., ii.

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¹ S.B., ii, 1. 15, and Ānandagiri on it.

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Every finite thing presents the contradiction that it is not only finite, *i.e.* confined within itself, but is also relative in the sense that it hangs on another. No object of experience is self-determined and self-contained. Every object is tending to pass away from itself to something else. The finite as such is transitory being, ever trying to transcend itself. This character of the world is enough to indicate its nature as appearance, or māyā. Change is unreal, since it implies instability, deficiency and incompleteness. Change is othering, alteration, *i.e.* contention and conflict. Whatever changes has parts which assert themselves and make life a scene of division and discord. Plato regards change as mere lapse, and Aristotle as a tendency to realisation, but both view the real as changeless. It is true that Aristotle regards God as activity or energy, but this activity knows no change and the energy does nothing. For Śaṃkara the real is changeless, unalterable, so full of being that it always is and for ever maintains itself in rest and repose. It has no lack, no need, and so knows no change or strife. For Bradley, "nothing that is perfectly real moves."

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Our experience is self-contradictory and not real, since reality should at least be self-consistent. In Śaṃkara's phrase, reality must be one, non-dual, but our experience is varied and discordant. The real is not what is open to the senses. It is not the content of right knowledge, since knowledge cannot be understood as valid apart from the conception of reality. It is the unalterable and the absolute, what remains identical with itself in all its manifestations in experience, the basis and ground of all appearances. The world of experience consists of names and forms,¹ and is bound by the relations of space, time and cause, which endlessly dissipate themselves. Take any event, it has an endless past and an endless future, it is never-ending and nowhere-ending. This tantalising endlessness which marks it as unreal invites the soul to press on to the absolute.

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¹ S.B., i. 3. 41.

Cites (3)