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vedic_kings
02 September 2006, 05:32 PM
Hi all.

I Still don't understand why there is a God. And more so why did God create?

Do Hindus believe God has a will, as in "God's will"? As Chrstians and Muslims say.

If we are God, then why was maya created , and all that follows like mind, ego and so on, in which we must return back to the Godhead, which we already are or come from?

I hope I make senses

Thanks for any in puts!

P.S. I understand creation as in the Tattva, but its the "why", that I don't understand.

TruthSeeker
03 September 2006, 02:34 AM
I Still don't understand why there is a God. And more so why did God create?


Since you say that "Life is Yoga" I assume that you believe in a God?



Do Hindus believe God has a will, as in "God's will"? As Chrstians and Muslims say.


Obviously, God, whether concieved as the Absolute or the Personal God, must have a will - else it becomes atheism.



If we are God, then why was maya created , and all that follows like mind, ego and so on, in which we must return back to the Godhead, which we already are or come from?


Very difficult questions, many different answers.

Well, if you could assume that an absolute does exist as the substratum of the world we see, and also assume that this Absolute could become a Personal God by some mysterious cause, the rest will be obvious.

There is really no cause that can be assigned For the existance of a Personal God, the only thing you could say is that it exists and is non different from the Absolute. So the ultimate Godhead can be taken to be either the Impersonal Absolute or the Personal God.(no big difference for all the fighting in that name)

Could a Personal God with infinite potential remain silent? He could not apparently, and his will is the basis of everything. We differ from Christianity in saying that only God's will exists, and no freewill is really there. God's will is experienced through his creation in the form of many "frewwills". The many freewills are illusory, and liberation is obtained on realization this freewill is just the divine will.

A Personal God who created something apart from him, and gave freewill to those external to him, and introduced punishment and rewards for those not abiding by his will, could not be consistant with the ideal God, who is always the embodiment of peace and bliss. All such theories do not even stand even the slightest logical scrutiny.

If a God exists, then he and his will alone exist - nothing else.

sarabhanga
03 September 2006, 06:14 AM
Namaste,

The answer from Ajativada (the science of immortal existence) would be that mortal existence is entirely due to Avidya. ;)

Znanna
03 September 2006, 09:44 AM
Namaste,

The answer from Ajativada (the science of immortal existence) would be that mortal existence is entirely due to Avidya. ;)


One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you're just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing.

:Cool:


Namaste,
ZN

vedic_kings
05 September 2006, 12:16 AM
Since you say that "Life is Yoga" I assume that you believe in a God?

Yes.


Obviously, God, whether concieved as the Absolute or the Personal God, must have a will - else it becomes atheism.

Interesting.... So God exist because of will?


Very difficult questions, many different answers.


Well, if you could assume that an absolute does exist as the substratum of the world we see, and also assume that this Absolute could become a Personal God by some mysterious cause, the rest will be obvious.

Im following...


There is really no cause that can be assigned For the existance of a Personal God, the only thing you could say is that it exists and is non different from the Absolute. So the ultimate Godhead can be taken to be either the Impersonal Absolute or the Personal God.(no big difference for all the fighting in that name)

Ok I can agree on that.


Could a Personal God with infinite potential remain silent? He could not apparently, and his will is the basis of everything. We differ from Christianity in saying that only God's will exists, and no freewill is really there. God's will is experienced through his creation in the form of many "frewwills". The many freewills are illusory, and liberation is obtained on realization this freewill is just the divine will.

Ok, so Freewill is God's will?


A Personal God who created something apart from him, and gave freewill to those external to him, and introduced punishment and rewards for those not abiding by his will, could not be consistant with the ideal God, who is always the embodiment of peace and bliss. All such theories do not even stand even the slightest logical scrutiny.

Agreed:)


If a God exists, then he and his will alone exist - nothing else.

Ok, then why were we created, is there a real point to create in the first place?

Thanks for your time!

vedic_kings
05 September 2006, 12:20 AM
Namaste,

The answer from Ajativada (the science of immortal existence) would be that mortal existence is entirely due to Avidya. ;)

So ignorance is why everything exist?

So how did ignorance come about?

sm78
05 September 2006, 04:04 AM
Ok, then why were we created, is there a real point to create in the first place?

There is no answer to this in human language.

The only logically acceptable answer is creation is eternal ~ it has no begining and end and nobody "created it" as we understand. This is the exact buddhist position. In this position your question gets invalid.

Hindu position from monistic angle should be quite close as there is no difference between creator and the creation. Creation-dissolution happens in cycles and there is no begining or end to it. And when creator and creation are same, even begining and end (even if they exist) are no point of concern.

I'm not sure about the dualist Hindu postion, but I think that creation is an infinite cycle is accepted there too and trancendental God is untouched by it.

Point to note is free will in hinduism is only God's will and there is no seperation. So there is no mess in creation in the eternal scale of time. Good times and Bad times come and go as per law of Karma.

sarabhanga
05 September 2006, 05:56 AM
So how did ignorance come about?

The answer from Ajativada (i.e. from the perspective of ultimate Truth and perfect Vidya) would be that Avidya is truly without existence, and can never arise. ;)

sm78
05 September 2006, 06:33 AM
The answer from Ajativada (i.e. from the perspective of ultimate Truth and perfect Vidya) would be that Avidya is truly without existence, and can never arise. ;)

What vada it will be if I regard Avidya as unavoidable companion of vidya?
======================================================

Whenever Vidya exist in partiality, avidya has to fill up the rest.
If Vidya exist in totality anywhere who will be the seer?, who will be seen?, how would anything percievable exist?

Avidya is like the shadow accompanying the body. It is not unreal, but counterpart of knowledge which is not complete/full. Together they are full. When everything is full with vidya then vidya looses its meaning as vidya. When everything is full with one thing, it's neither vidya nor avidya.

So I think avidya is as real as vidya and as unreal as the other. But it is knowledge which takes us beyond knowledge. As sentient beings we cannot take the path of ignorance to brahman, but I believe the path is circular.

-------------------------------------------------------

What vada is this?:rolleyes:

sm78
05 September 2006, 07:36 AM
So ignorance is why everything exist?
don't think so. rather the opposite.


So how did ignorance come about?
because the knowledge is not full (here), but that is full.

if knowledge becomes full, does knowledge exit as knowledge any more?? That's my question.....

Existence is real irrespective of ignorance or knowledge. In the domain of knowledge, ignorance must be real too. In this grand scheme of creation knowledge and ignorance are necessary byproducts (like the divine potion and poison that came out during ocean churning).

These are my thoughts though. It seems some schools of hindu philosphy have similar ideas. Need to research more.

Sudarshan
05 September 2006, 09:39 AM
don't think so. rather the opposite.


because the knowledge is not full (here), but that is full.

if knowledge becomes full, does knowledge exit as knowledge any more?? That's my question.....

Existence is real irrespective of ignorance or knowledge. In the domain of knowledge, ignorance must be real too. In this grand scheme of creation knowledge and ignorance are necessary byproducts (like the divine potion and poison that came out during ocean churning).

These are my thoughts though. It seems some schools of hindu philosphy have similar ideas. Need to research more.

Namaste sm,

You dont realize why Advaitin is so reluctant to admit the reality of Avidya?

If Avidya exists, its source has to be the Brahman, else Advaita is gone with the wind.( a second to Brahman does not exist)

If the source is the Brahman, then avidya must either be Brahman himself or a guNa( dharma), no third alternative exists.

If Avidya is Brahman himself, then you can just discard Advaita, as avidya becomes unchangeable and it can never vanish.(eternal avidya)

If avidya is the Brahman's guNa, it is incompatible with Advaita's nirvisesha Brahman. If you try to posit a Brahman with guNa as the absolute, then also we are faced with the dualty of distinction between the object and its attributes, which Advaita so vehemently denies.

If you are going to be a pure monist, you cannot simply admit the reality of avidya without killing your doctrine yourself. However, denial of avidya does not change anything - it simply exists to be removed. Saying that "avidya does not exist" a hundred times does not change things.

sm78
05 September 2006, 10:08 AM
Namaste sm,

You dont realize why Advaitin is so reluctant to admit the reality of Avidya?

If Avidya exists, its source has to be the Brahman, else Advaita is gone with the wind.( a second to Brahman does not exist)

If the source is the Brahman, then avidya must either be Brahman himself or a guNa( dharma), no third alternative exists.

If Avidya is Brahman himself, then you can just discard Advaita, as avidya becomes unchangeable and it can never vanish.(eternal avidya)

If avidya is the Brahman's guNa, it is incompatible with Advaita's nirvisesha Brahman. If you try to posit a Brahman with guNa as the absolute, then also we are faced with the dualty of distinction between the object and its attributes, which Advaita so vehemently denies.

If you are going to be a pure monist, you cannot simply admit the reality of avidya without killing your doctrine yourself. However, denial of avidya does not change anything - it simply exists to be removed. Saying that "avidya does not exist" a hundred times does not change things.

... hmmm :headscratch:

Sudarshan
05 September 2006, 10:23 AM
Or is it due to the limit of human logic?

willie
05 September 2006, 09:02 PM
Finally,someone has come up with an idea I have been thinking about for weeks.

If everything is brahman , then all of the existence we know is a usless waste to time. With no freewill , then all problems and solutions are brahmans problems and solutions. There can be no ultimate truth or ultimate lie. Just a bunch of actors on a stage doing a play the will come to and end that the actors cannot influence.

atanu
06 September 2006, 03:48 AM
Finally,someone has come up with an idea I have been thinking about for weeks.

If everything is brahman , then all of the existence we know is a usless waste to time. With no freewill , then all problems and solutions are brahmans problems and solutions. There can be no ultimate truth or ultimate lie. Just a bunch of actors on a stage doing a play the will come to and end that the actors cannot influence.




Nice. But Why? You can have a desire and then build a house in near future?

Some one has full free will without any desire. He is called Avimukta. And you have the free will to know the Avimukta.

Shriyash21
06 September 2006, 06:50 AM
Hi all.

I Still don't understand why there is a God. And more so why did God create?

Do Hindus believe God has a will, as in "God's will"? As Chrstians and Muslims say.

If we are God, then why was maya created , and all that follows like mind, ego and so on, in which we must return back to the Godhead, which we already are or come from?

I hope I make senses

Thanks for any in puts!

P.S. I understand creation as in the Tattva, but its the "why", that I don't understand.
Hey great questions you have got there!
Im glad that another one has joined the fold of seekers after 'Truth' {or any other word you want to call it!}

I always have felt that when a person starts asking these type of questions, much become possible, but on his own merit.

And if he sincere then he will go to the very roots with a discriminating mind in search for answers, and will find 'it', but even if it is just a curiosity, it still is a great direction in which to sharpen the intellect.

I wouldnt call them 'difficult' questions at all, because these fundamental questions have occured to humanity since forever.....but that dosent mean the answer you will get in a textbook, although depending on the book, you can come pretty close!

Isint it amazing then that we still cant find a ready-made answer?
There must be a fundamental reason why not.
And to find out this reason, one begins this, the greatest of all quests, the quest for the 'meaning' of it all.

vedic_kings
06 September 2006, 12:00 PM
Hey great questions you have got there!

:)


Im glad that another one has joined the fold of seekers after 'Truth' {or any other word you want to call it!}

Well. i'll tell ya that in the begining age 14, I was asking such qusetions, and no one had answers! An interesting thing happen, I got really sick with pneumonia for two and a half weeks! When I got well, I lost 20 pounds! Anyways, I started reading up on disease and discovered Ayurveda, which in time lead me to Yoga and Hinduism:) So in a strange way I got alot of my answers through sickness.


I always have felt that when a person starts asking these type of questions, much become possible, but on his own merit.

Indeed:)


And if he sincere then he will go to the very roots with a discriminating mind in search for answers, and will find 'it', but even if it is just a curiosity, it still is a great direction in which to sharpen the intellect.

Yes indeed. I offen wonder why such qusetions cannot be found in the so-called holy books or God words (Bible/Koran)? Which at that time age 14 had no such answes to such qusetions:headscratch: When I pitup the Bhagavad-Gita most of my qusetions was answered!


I wouldnt call them 'difficult' questions at all, because these fundamental questions have occured to humanity since forever.....but that dosent mean the answer you will get in a textbook, although depending on the book, you can come pretty close!

Well the Bible isn't one of thoses books! Much more distorted!


Isint it amazing then that we still cant find a ready-made answer?
There must be a fundamental reason why not.
And to find out this reason, one begins this, the greatest of all quests, the quest for the 'meaning' of it all.

Yes, and my understanding is that the mind cannot understand such deep qusetions, but can ask.

satay
06 September 2006, 12:13 PM
I think that this 'creation' is like the dance of a dancer. That dancer is nataraja and he is dancing...creating, sustaining, destroying all at the same time from the subatomic level to the highest levels of our experience.

:)

willie
06 September 2006, 08:50 PM
Just because you have free will does not mean that you have to use it. Besides with no freewill they people are just windup disposible toy, not real value. And since people are disposible all religion is just a waste of time, sure you can do rituals and make sacrifices but will all of peoples action programed there is no way to change the out come.

If you want to have variability and a chance of a different out come then free will is about the only way to achieve it. And in a freewill environment brahman has no idea of where his creation is going and how it will end up before this planet dies from the sun going out. In this type of play, then rituals and the other trappings of religion are useful in the sense of recieving instructions from devine sources. But free will must go along with a dualist outlook on the arguement that seems to go on endlessly here.

sarabhanga
07 September 2006, 04:15 AM
... hmmm :headscratch:

If Creation is also eternal, then God has a rival. And this is pure Dvaita-vada (akin to Kapila’s Samkhya).

If Vidya is never without Avidya, then that mixed Vidya can never be perfect. But perhaps you might call it Vishishtadvaita. ;)

If the Vidya is total, then All MUST be known.

When fully immersed in the Light, there can never be any shadow.

Without knowledge, existence is without any proof, and only in total dissolution can “Avidya” exist for Brahman ~ but in this perfect Prajna of Brahman, there is no possibility of meaning, so ALL words are inappropriate and all philosophies moot.

While Creation exists, there will always be suffering and Avidya ~ and only in complete Dissolution, there is blissful Avidya once more.

Immortal Existence truly passes, from ashes unto Ash.

saidevo
07 September 2006, 05:50 AM
It seems to me that we can find reflections of great Truths in the states and events of the created world.

Since Brahman is one without a second, and since all the transient realities are only manifestations the One Reality, we can infer two things:

1. The sum total of all the material faculties in all the planes of the Cosmos makes up the Cosmic Sheaths of the Saguna Brahman. (Does the word cosmos have its root in the Sanskrit term kosha?)

2. The sum total of all the consciousness that is inherent in the matter in Cosmos is the Cosmic Consciousness of the Saguna Brahman.

Since all that lives in the Cosmos are reflections of the Brahman, then the three states that mark the daily life of a human also mark that of the Saguna Brahman. In other words, all that happens in the wakeful (jagrat) state of the souls constitute the Jagrat State of Brahman. In the same way, Brahman has two other states: Dream (svapna) state and Deep Sleep (sushupti), corresponding to the activities in the astral and mental worlds. Therefore, we can say that when Nirguna Brahman manifests as Saguna Brahman, he has three states: jagrat, svapna and sushupti.

This means that the Turiya state should correspond to the Nirguna Brahman, where all differences are resolved into Unity. This may be the reason that conscious realization of Brahman happens only in the Turiya state of meditation.

Thus, the eternal cycle of Creation and Dissolution represent the daily life of Brahman in his scale of time. They are the natural outcome of his breathing out and in. In the Turiya state, he stops breathing and goes into samadhi.

But why create and dissolve at all? The answer may be a counter question:

Why does the human soul wake up after deep sleep and why is it reborn in successive lives? If the answer to this question is Trisna, the desire and longing for life and experiences, for Brahman it may be his own Trisna that makes him repeat what he is doing, in eternal cycles of time.

If Trisna of a human soul carries the tag of Karma, so does the Trisna of Brahman, which is the sum total of all karma in the Cosmos.

These are just my impressons, I have no idea of any scriptural correspondences.

Sudarshan
07 September 2006, 06:46 AM
Just because you have free will does not mean that you have to use it. Besides with no freewill they people are just windup disposible toy, not real value. And since people are disposible all religion is just a waste of time, sure you can do rituals and make sacrifices but will all of peoples action programed there is no way to change the out come.

If you want to have variability and a chance of a different out come then free will is about the only way to achieve it. And in a freewill environment brahman has no idea of where his creation is going and how it will end up before this planet dies from the sun going out. In this type of play, then rituals and the other trappings of religion are useful in the sense of recieving instructions from devine sources. But free will must go along with a dualist outlook on the arguement that seems to go on endlessly here.

Freewill is programmed to culminate in divine will, so that you can have icing on the cake.


One scenario:

Just imagine samsAra to be a maze, with innumerable paths in it, with exactly one entry and one exit. So the freewill must finally cultimate in the exit, regardless of the time taken. You may go round and round the maze and mark all the routes you have travelled, and thus make sure you dont enter a false route traversed earliern - that is handled by the law of Karma. So given arbitary length of time, the exit will be found - sometimes very fast too.

Both freewill and divine will are addressed in such a maze. If a human can think thus, God's maze must have much bigger surprises in store for us. It could be something much more than such a maze, with lots of place for right paths, wrong paths, love paths, the path of action, path of knowledge etc in it, each with its own unique aspects. Perhaps there is also a shortest path through the maze known as grace too - that many people talking and fighting about?

sarabhanga
07 September 2006, 08:18 AM
Namaste Sudarshan,

God’s maze is the ultimate matrix, spun by the loom of time. :sleeping:

Sudarshan
07 September 2006, 08:53 AM
Namaste Sudarshan,

God’s maze is the ultimate matrix, spun by the loom of time. :sleeping:

Agreed. The ubiquitous OM.

willie
07 September 2006, 09:22 PM
This maze theory is full of holes. If devine will it the ultimate end then it would stand to reason that no human action could affect the outcome. So the sum of human existence is a useless exercise. All the talk of religion and higher learning is just that, talk with no action and no progress.

Additionally what of all the stories about higher developed parts of brahman comming to earth, such as krishna and rama? Where these just made up stories to keep the con job of freewill going and subject humans to the myth and keep them in the dark. I don't think so! Sure brahman may probably has a long range plan for humanity and these higher developed being were trying to get things back on track so the final solution can come about.

With out real free will then there is no true religion and no reason to resist any thought or action. It will all work out in the end.

The real ultimate truth is that with no freewill then brahman would still exist but humans are just disposable trash to be used and tossed away, just keep the con going and keep future generations doing the work to achieve the end result.

Sudarshan
08 September 2006, 01:49 AM
This maze theory is full of holes. If devine will it the ultimate end then it would stand to reason that no human action could affect the outcome. So the sum of human existence is a useless exercise. All the talk of religion and higher learning is just that, talk with no action and no progress.


Since you do not percieve God, and the objective of life is to find God, it is obvious that there is a maze. No holes at all. Only the details of the maze could be interpreted differently. If you beleive in a God, the maze cannot be dismissed regardless of your religion.




Additionally what of all the stories about higher developed parts of brahman comming to earth, such as krishna and rama? Where these just made up stories to keep the con job of freewill going and subject humans to the myth and keep them in the dark. I don't think so! Sure brahman may probably has a long range plan for humanity and these higher developed being were trying to get things back on track so the final solution can come about.


Parts of Brahman? Krishna and Rama? Brahman has not parts, dear.



With out real free will then there is no true religion and no reason to resist any thought or action. It will all work out in the end.
The real ultimate truth is that with no freewill then brahman would still exist but humans are just disposable trash to be used and tossed away, just keep the con going and keep future generations doing the work to achieve the end result.

Inside the maze, you have the freewill to choose a wide variety of routes before you reach the exit. Christianity and Islam also have such exits, but their "wicked" god created two exits - HELL and HEAVEN, for the maze, with exactly one route for heaven and infinite routes for Hell. A wise God, reagrdless of his reason for creation would have allowed only one EXIT - moskha. That is why it is called a sport. This cannot exist in dualism which accepts entities completely outside God, like Satan or the world.

God's omnipotence and omniscience comes from his omnipresence. Without such all pervasiveness, even God cannot accomplish wahetver he wants, and such freewill outside God will lead to the damnation of the majority.:doh:

God creating something out of nothing is a statement equivalent to atheism. When God alone exists, everything should come from him alone.(good or bad both relative)

sarabhanga
08 September 2006, 07:52 AM
Namaste Willie,

No human action or will can affect the ultimate outcome, only the length of time spent searching for the entry (rather than exit, for surely we are born by an exit and return by the entrance to heaven). And all religion is intended primarily to guide its followers with certainty and grace to that door.

Sudarshan
08 September 2006, 11:13 AM
Inside the maze, you have the freewill to choose a wide variety of routes before you reach the exit. Christianity and Islam also have such exits, but their "wicked" god created two exits - HELL and HEAVEN, for the maze, with exactly one route for heaven and infinite routes for Hell. A wise God, reagrdless of his reason for creation would have allowed only one EXIT - moskha. That is why it is called a sport. This cannot exist in dualism which accepts entities completely outside God, like Satan or the world.


In Shanti Parva, Bhishma explains the fate of a Yogi who failed in the Yoga, by either falling to his senses, inadequate control of mind, misuse of siddhis and similar things. He goes on telling Yudhistira that whoever shall fail in Yoga will get hell and whoever will succeed will go to Brahman.

The shocked Yudhishtira is forced to ask why the failed Yogi is made to enter the painful hell. That is when Bhishma explains that he refrerred to the transient heavens ( the seven heavens) as hell, as anything short of the world of Brahman is an intolerable hell.

By the standards of the bliss of Brahman, any non eternal existance however blissful is equal to hell. It is just like comparing the numbers 1,2,10, 100 etc to infinity. It does not matter if you have 1 or one million units of bliss, it is zero percent of Brahman.

Christian hell may also be referring to this concept, but the brimstones and gnashing of teeth present the wrong idea.

willie
08 September 2006, 08:55 PM
With no freewill to do as you please a person is not an autonomous enitiy but only a wind up top for brahman. And it that is the case then there no such thing as dharma or kharma, just meaning less talk. The conjob that brahman is pulling off on all humanity.

And as for rama, krishna and the others parts of brahman, it is not time to leave these labels behind and admit to being monotheism and put the other myth to rest.

There is not use in having a maze if the end is the same, sure the earth will be destroyed at some point, when the sun goes out. But if it is blown to dust, part of it might go into making another planet , as the whether or not that planet will have any intelligent life on it is another story.

It seem to always come down to whether or not a person believes in god and then the belittling of that persons concept of god begins. Well here is another question. Why would a person want to believe in a god that needed to have a bunch or windup toys to tell it how great it was? Certainly that is bad of worse then any hell, and you better take another look at hell in the old testament. It sure does not say much about torture, mostly is it a place where people are not subject to god's love.

sarabhanga
09 September 2006, 12:41 AM
I think that this 'creation' is like the dance of a dancer. That dancer is nataraja and he is dancing...creating, sustaining, destroying all at the same time from the subatomic level to the highest levels of our experience.

See: Shiva Nataraja (http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/showthread.php?t=551)

sarabhanga
09 September 2006, 03:07 AM
From sacred ash unto sacred ash ~ the eternal vibhuti of bhasma ~ the sacred vow of Brahman.

sarabhanga
09 September 2006, 04:57 AM
When the opposition of Vidyā - Avidyā is reconciled in sandhi, the result is only Vidyāvidyā (the Vidyā of Vidyā itself).

And this is the ultimate Avidyavidyā of Brahman.