The source of the universe is essentially present in the universe – Swami Chinmayananda.
Is there a God? Where is He? What does He look like?
Questions about the God are universal and people have been asking them since time immemorial. This is because although we experience this wonderfully ordered, intelligent world of breathtaking beauty, its Creator, whom we call God, remains mysteriously invisible to us.
Three Laws of Causation
In his talks on The Logic of Spirituality* my Guru, Swami Chinmayananda, explains how the ancient masters of Vedanta found the answers to these baffling questions.
Having observed the world, they understood that it was governed by the Law of Cause and Effect. They investigated deeply into this law and formulated 3 Laws of Causation.
By understanding and applying these laws, they discovered where the Ultimate Cause or Creator of the world was.
First Law of Causation
Law 1: An effect can never be without a cause.
Something cannot come out of nothing. Creation, which is the effect, must have a creator (the cause) .
I remember reading a story about a brash teenager who was proud of his learning and intelligence. He didn’t accept the existence of a Creator or God. As God was not seen, experienced, or proved by science, he concluded that God couldn’t be real. He made fun of his father’s devotion and called it blind belief. Nothing his father said could change his mind.
One day, the father had an idea. He bought a beautiful painting and set it up on an easel in the living room. When his son came home and saw the painting, he remarked, “Wow! Awesome painting! Where did it come from?”
His father, who was pretending to read the newspaper, casually looked up and said, “Oh, I don’t know. It just appeared. I found it when I came back from work today.” The son was puzzled at his father’s answer.
“But Dad, the painting couldn’t have just come out of thin air and found itself in our living room. Who brought it here?” “I don’t know, Son,” answered the father, without skipping a beat.
Curious, the son looked for the signature of the artist of the painting, but found none. “Dad, the artist hasn’t signed it. Who painted it?” His father, now amused, smiled and said, “There’s no artist. The painting was painted by no one.”
The son became angry at his father’s nonchalant attitude. “Dad! It doesn’t make sense! Who made his painting and how did it get here?” he demanded.
The father calmly answered, “If you can’t accept the fact that this mere painting has come out of nothing and painted by no one, how can you accept that this entire world has come out of nothing and has no Creator?”
Second Law of Causation
Law 2: Effects are nothing but the cause itself in different forms.
Effects are not different from their cause. In all gold ornaments, gold is their cause, while the ornaments are the effects. Rings, bracelets, ear-rings, bangles, necklaces and chains may all look different but, are essentially nothing but gold in different forms.
All clay objects, whether they are cups, jugs, plates etc. are all nothing but clay in various forms.
In the same way, this world of infinite names and forms is the effect of one Ultimate Cause. Religion calls it God or the Creator, spirituality calls it Source, Ultimate Cause or Supreme Truth. No matter what we call it, we are referring to the same Cause of the universe.
Third Law of Causation
Law 3: From the effects, when the cause is removed, nothing remains.
If clay was removed from all clay objects, there would be no clay objects. If gold was removed from all things made of gold, those things would not exist.
The Ultimate Cause or God gives existence and life to all creation. In inert objects such as stones and rocks, the Cause expresses as existence only. This is experienced as an ‘is-ness’. We say the table ‘is’, the moon ‘is’, the rock ‘is’ and so on.
In animate beings, the Ultimate Cause expresses as existence and life. In other words, we exist and are alive because of God. Without Him, we would be no better than a clump of earth. We are the effects, He is our Cause.
God expressing through your human body and mind is you, and God expressing through my body and mind, is me.
If God were removed from me, I would die away and cease to exist. Nothing of me would remain.
Finding God
You are never away from Him. You are in Him, with Him. You are Him alone! – Swami Chinmayananda
The Three Laws of Causation tell us that God exists and that he exists as us. He is not siting somewhere up in the clouds separate from us. **God is the core and Self in all of us. We owe our very existence and life to Him.
To realize God, we need to look no further than within ourselves. He is right here, right now. As we put in efforts to improve ourselves and grow spiritually, we will eventually be able us to realize Him within through meditation.
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*This article is based on Swami Chinmayananda’s talks on “The Logic of Spirituality.” You can purchase the DVD from www.ChinmayaPublications.com
** To understand where to find God, I have written a little story which you can read here: The Vedanta Story.
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