Why is it that every human intellect in every part of the world during all periods of history, was always asking – What is the cause of every effect? They started a deep and exhaustive study of cause-effect relationship. As a result of this investigation and study, they reduced their entire data into three laws of causation.
The three laws they deduced from their entire study, and Number One Law is – ‘An effect can never be without a cause.’ The waves cannot be without ocean. Ornaments cannot be made without gold. Pots can never be made without clay. An effect is not possible without the cause.
Law Number Two – ‘Effects are plural.’ Nothing but the cause itself in different forms. The big wave, medium wave, the small wave, ripple, foam, bubble, and the lather are all different forms of the ocean –
The Cause. The jug, the cup, the saucer, the plates, the flower vase, are all different shapes and different names for what? – the clay in different forms.
The bangles and the rings and the chains and the earrings are all different names, different shapes, and different uses. But all of them are gold in different forms.
And Law Number Three: ‘From the effect if the cause is removed, nothing remains’. If a wave is transferred to the hill, there will be no waves. From clay pot, all the clay is removed, no pot.
From the gold chain, all the gold is removed, nothing there remains. Since the effect is nothing but the cause itself in different forms, from the effect if the cause is removed, nothing remains.
When they got these three laws, they had the scientists to apply it to the world. Here is the universe that you and I are seeing and experiencing. It cannot be without a cause, why? The first law. Effect cannot be without a cause – must have a cause. That cause of universe religion calls as ‘God’, philosophy calls it as reality or truth.
We have heard there is a God and God created the world. But what our doubt is, Who is god’? Where is god? What is god? Is he man or a woman?
All sorts of worries and anxieties. And why did he create? Where did he create? When did he create? And thousand questions. These students of the Vedic period asked these questions to the teacher. The teacher only cried out, Shanthi! Shanthi! Shanthi!!. Peace be, Peace be, Peace be. Why?
Unless the mind is peaceful, you cannot rationally think. Excited mind has no capacity to logically think. They said – let us apply the 2nd law. Effects are nothing but cause itself in different forms. Therefore our assumption that, God is above clouds, he is like a manufacturer, manufacturing things and pushing it in to the world is absurd, illogical, is false, is a superstition.
The effect cannot be separate from the cause and therefore the Lord, the God – One without a second, when he created the world, He must have created forms from Himself – the entire universe. Names and forms, the mineral world, plants and animals and human everything we are seeing here are all nothing but Him – He in different forms.
Excerpted from ‘Logic Of Spirituality.’ The 97th birth anniversary of Swami Chinmayananda will be observed on May 8.
Swami Chinmayananda
