Causality, Karma and Rebirth

The Self, being of the nature of consciousness, is self-effulgent. And it has, by virtue of its self-effulgence, the capacity to reveal objects directly and instantaneously. The absence of ubiquitous perception indicates that there is some primal covering over the Self, which obstructs its natural revealing power from revealing the objects of the world.

In Indian philosophy, this obstruction of the Self is the body itself. Embodiment is three-layered. At its most primal layer, the covering is essentially of the nature of sleep. The middle layer is the layer of ideation, the realm of mind. The outermost layer is the layer of the gross physical body through which the embodied self comes to be a creature in the world. The three layers are known as bodies with different names: mūla-śarīra (seed body), sūkṣma-śarīra (subtle body), and sthūla-śarīra (gross body), respectively.

The paradox of embodiment is that the embodiment of the self does not, in truth, exist. How can something arise in Consciousness - the ground of all the universe - and then contain it? The embodiment of the self comes about not through a spatiotemporal physical process, but through a cognitive condition whereby the Self becomes morphed into the body, as it were, and cognizes the body to be the self.

This erroneous idea is the mithya-jñāna superimposed on the Self and the body. This makes one see the body manifested in the realm of the world as the Self. An idea in the mind is the same as the body apprehended in the world as the Self. As seen before, the idea in the mind and its corresponding matter in the world are the same, appearing in two different modes of cognitive presentation.

The idea of the Self’s embodiment through a cognitive condition is central to Indian tradition; it forms a core tenet in all six darśanas, or systems of philosophy, though with slight technical variations. Embodiment is an erroneous cognitive condition; hence, right knowledge confers liberation. Embodiment persists so long as the erroneous knowledge continues.

Even when the physical body undergoes destruction, the notion of the body will continue to persist in the realm of the mind. The Self, still equipped with the power of thinking, would consider the destruction of the body a loss and crave to be in possession of a body. In the Indian tradition, this craving, along with the law of causation that bears upon the embodied jīvātma’s moral actions in its past births, results in the rebirth of the Self in another body.

It is within this three-fold structure of embodiment that we must look for the instruments of perception. For, even though the Self has the capacity to reveal objects by virtue of its intrinsic effulgence, maya obstructs its power of revealing. The innermost layer is the layer in which the clearing in the covering of maya appears; the middle layer is the layer that actively reaches out to the object with the help of the instruments of perception; and the outermost layer comprising the physical body is the layer that constitutes the seat of experience.

Seen and Unseen Causes, Karma, and Experiencing the World

Perception and experience of the world occur to the individual self when there is a clearing in the veil of maya. The clearing appears by the Wheel of Causation operating in nature, or prakṛti. The causality that operates in them is of two kinds: the seen and the unseen. The causality that operates between physical objects is of the seen kind. The nature of the objects themselves determines this.

The causality of the unseen kind is that in which the immediate effect of an action is invisible. But all actions of conscious agents do not produce unseen effects; it is only those actions that have a moral dimension to them that result in unseen effects. The effect of an individual’s moral action is apūrva, meaning that what did not exist before is newly born. It is the result of either a virtuous action or a morally transgressive action, and its effect surfaces at a future time when the conditions for it to fructify are satisfied.

The total of the unfructified apūrvas of an individual is the individual’s adṛṣṭa, also referred to as past karma since it is the net balance of the accumulated effects of past actions held in store for future fructification. Śrī Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, in commenting on the Bṛhadāraṅyaka Upaniṣad, in the context of a man’s rebirth, explains it as follows: He has adopted the whole universe as his means to the realization of the results of his work; and he is going from one body to another to fulfill this object.

And as Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa says,

A man is born into the body that has been made ready for him.

There is perfect synchronicity between the world that an individual being perceives and the individual’s past karma. The Law of Causation (Dharma Cakra, or Wheel of Dharma) projects the manifested world in accordance with the collective past karmas of individual beings. An individual within this collective perceives that part of the manifested universe that his or her past karma entails him or her experiencing. The physical body is the seat of this experience, and the regulated uncovering of the veil of maya - the veil of sleep under which the individual being transmigrates - determines that part of the world the individual being will experience.

The Law of Causation does not violate the nature of objects. It is the nature of fire to burn and water to flow, and these natures are part of the law. The unfolding of the manifested world therefore does not violate the physical laws that operate between objects by virtue of their physical natures (dharmas). The causal force of Dharma Chakra acts as an unseen ordering force that determines the boundary conditions of the objects of the world. This is the overarching Law of Causation that the Indian tradition espouses, and it comes from śabda-pramāṇa, the means of knowledge by which reality beyond the realm of the senses may be known.

Authored by Dr. Pingali Gopal. Published by Brhat.