Category Archives: Creation

Identity of Upadana Karan & Nimitta Karan

The two reasons for creation are “upadana karan” and “nimitta karan”.

“Upadana karan” refers to the material cause or the substance that is used to create something. In other words, it refers to the raw material or the building blocks used in creation.

“Nimitta karan” refers to the instrumental cause or the factor that triggers the creation process. It refers to the agency or the force that initiates the creation.

In the case of the spider and the web, both these causes become one. The spider uses its own substance or material to create the web, and it also acts as the instrumental cause or the force that initiates the creation of the web. Thus, the spider itself becomes both the material and instrumental cause of the web.

Similarly, in the case of a dream, the dreamer’s own mind acts as both the material and instrumental cause. The dreamer’s mind uses its own material, i.e., the thoughts, memories, and impressions stored in the mind, to create the dream. At the same time, it also acts as the instrumental cause, initiating the process of dream creation.

In both cases, the material and instrumental causes become one, highlighting the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things in the universe.

S-TOE (Spiritual Theory of Everything) in a Nutshell

There is Cosmic Mind with static (memory container) & dynamic (creativity/imagination/memory content) nature causing the creation and the dissolution cyclically. The static nature of the mind acts as the knower/seer and the dynamic nature acts as creator projecting the ever changing world of forms. Creation is with respect to a reference object and this reference object is the window through which cosmic mind experiences its own creation. This reference object itself is present in the creation just like a dreamer may be present in his own dream. Experiencing the creation through a particular form leads to the identification of knower with that specific form. Identification with a form is due to ignorance as knower does not understand about the world being mere projection of imagination and erroneously takes the world to be real. Since knower is identified with form, now it has ego-sense or “I-Sense”. The most important but unfortunate aspect of this ego-sense is the deepening of impressions in the memory. This ego-sense claims the ownership of actions though the dynamic nature of the mind as a whole is the owner of all actions. Due to “I-Sense” being associated with identification with a form, the Cosmic Mind appears to be marginalised and now it can be called just the Cosmic Mmind. The process of identification with different objects/bodies continues and the mind enjoys/suffers due to attachment/identification or “I-Sense”. With more and more experiences, memory keeps on learning and finally figures out the nature of reality that everything including itself eventually is, “Impersonal Awareness” and the ownership of actions by the “I-Sense” is false. Now, new deep binding impressions are not created in the memory and old ones are erased. The “I-Sense” associated with a form fades away. Eventually, “I-Sense” is erased from the memory and now the world of forms is ineffective in creating “I-Sense” due to the presence of firm knowledge of the reality and the memory becomes pure having no binding impressions.

One Appears as Many

Thoughts come out from pure consciousness due to the faculty of consciousness called imagination (maya). Since one thought is separate from another thought from the perspective of individual thought, there is manyness. Every thought is a separate thing/being from this relative standpoint. However, each thought is made of consciousness itself and hence what appears to be many from the perspective of an individual thought actually is one from the perspective of consciousness.

Creation Theories

imageQ: If the truth is only one why there are so many theories of creation put forward by various religions & philosophies?

A: If you ask a frog in the well about creation what can it say? When we want to know about the purpose and cause of creation, we need to see this from the perspective of the creator and not from the perspective of someone who is part of the creation. Since absolute truth is consciousness and there is nothing else but it from its perspective, actually there is no creation (please refer to this). But since answer is to be given to somebody living within the creation asking this question, various attempts are made to come out with the most sensible answer applicable at that particular point of time.

Why there is creation?

Q:Why there is creation?

A: Creation is the dream of consciousness in which consciousness itself is present in many forms. Here is an analogy to understand this:

Consciousness is (say) Vishnu, Vishnu sees a dream (say, Brahma) in which he himself is present in many forms. So, you the questioner is a dream object in Vishnu’s dream. When this dream is over one can say that Shiva has destroyed the world. Here Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva are used as symbols meant for explanation purpose. Vishnu symbolises pure consciousness, Brahma symbolises creation (i.e. consciousness in dream or under ignorance), Shiva symbolises destruction of dream/ignorance. One can use different symbols if one wants to.