Maharaj’s teachings challenge the conventional understanding of causation, time, and space. He argues that these are mental categories that arise and subside with the mind. As long as the mind operates, causation is a valid law. However, everything mental, including the law of causation, contradicts itself.
In actual life, we tend to initiate action with a view to a result. However, Maharaj argues that such activity is due to ignorance. If people knew that nothing could happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would achieve much more with less expenditure of energy.
Maharaj’s views on causation and purposeful action raise several questions. If everything is an expression of the totality of causes, how can we talk of purposeful action towards an achievement? The very urge to achieve is also an expression of the total universe. It merely shows that the energy potential has risen at a particular point. It is the illusion of time that makes us talk of causality. When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity, and creative freedom takes its place.
Maharaj’s teachings suggest that everything is uncaused, arising, and disappearing for no known reason whatsoever. When Maharaj says that a thing is without cause, he means that it can be without a particular cause. For example, a person’s birth is not caused by a particular woman, but it cannot happen without the sun and the earth. Even these could not have caused the person’s birth without the most important factor: the person’s desire to be born. It is the desire that gives birth, that gives name and form.
Desire is one of the many causal factors. However, the source of all that is, is the Infinite Possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in us and which throws its power and light and love on every experience. Maharaj argues that this source is not a cause, and no cause is a source. This is why he says that everything is uncaused. We may try to trace how a thing happens, but we cannot find out why a thing is as it is. A thing is as it is because the universe is as it is.
Maharaj argues that the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing, and nothing in existence has a particular cause. Therefore, to speak of causality as a universal law is incorrect. When the source and ground of everything are the only cause of everything, the universe is not bound by its content. It is a manifestation or expression of a principle that is fundamentally and totally free. The universe’s potentialities are infinite, and causality cannot be a universal law.
In actual life, we invariably initiate action with a view to a result. However, Maharaj believes that there is a lot of such activity going on because of ignorance. If people knew that nothing could happen unless the entire universe made it happen, they would achieve much more with less expenditure of energy.
The urge to achieve is also an expression of the total universe, and it merely shows that the energy potential has risen at a particular point. The illusion of time makes people talk of causality. When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity, and creative freedom takes its place.
Maharaj believes that a thing can be without a particular cause. For example, a person’s birth does not necessarily require their own mother, but it does require the sun and the earth. Even these could not have caused a person’s birth without the most important factor: their own desire to be born. It is the desire that gives birth, that gives name and form.
The desirable is imagined and wanted and manifests itself as something tangible or conceivable. Thus is created the world in which we live, our personal world. The real world is beyond the mind’s ken, and we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, one must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.
The net is made of many contradictions. People do and undo at every step, they want peace, love, and happiness, and work hard to create pain, hatred, and war. By looking at the net and its many contradictions, and removing them, people can see the universe as it is.
Maharaj believes that causality, even as a concept, does not apply to chaos. For everything, there are innumerable causal factors. The source of all that is, is the Infinite Possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in people and throws its power, light, and love on every experience. However, this source is not a cause, and no cause is a source. Because of that, Maharaj says everything is uncaused. People may try to trace how a thing happens, but they cannot find out why a thing is as it is. A thing is as it is because the universe is as it is.
Maharaj’s teachings challenge us to rethink our understanding of causation, time, and space. They invite us to see the universe as it is, beyond the net of our desires, and remove the contradictions that create our personal world. In doing so, we can experience creative freedom and the infinite potentialities of the universe.
