KARMA YOGA 2

This universe is a vast network of Maya, an intricate web of divine thought, a cosmic labour of love. The physical world refines progressively into subtler worlds till all space-time is transcended in Brahman, the ultimate reality, the ground of all phenomena, the absolute. This entire web of space-time is held in karma, karma causal and karma probabilistic.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the subsequent discoveries of quantum physics have demonstrated clearly that Nature does not operate entirely along causal lines, that causality rules macroscopic phenomena while at the quantum level of particulate matter it is all a question of probable happening. Now, this seriously challenges the determinism of action and consequence. If particle-behaviour is probabilistic and particles compose matter at the very base, then how may we be so sure that karma is entirely causal? Is it then that at the sentient level events are pretty much macroscopic due to the progression from the relatively subtler worlds to the relatively grosser world and as such the laws of karma become causal? It then stands to reason to say that phenomenon is a progression from the subtlest to the grossest in an ascending series of causal links, widely separated at the quantum level which gives rise to probabilistic behaviour of particles and very closely knit at the macroscopic level which gives rise to causality. The universe in all its phases is then an integrated whole of progressive refinement as one proceeds inward and of progressive grossness as one traverses outward.

Probability and causality are, perhaps, two modes of a single reality whose entire gamut is the domain of karma, karma probable and karma deterministic. And herein lies the great hope, that, after all, we are tending through progressively a loosening hold of causality towards ultimate freedom. Also, perhaps, the strictest causality being non-functional in Nature in all its phases except at the grossest psycho-physical level, it allows the play of the Divine in showering grace on us and even in Divine intervention as prophesied in the Geeta during periods of great spiritual degradation and excessive material ascendancy. Thus, Avartarvaad is vindicated, perhaps, even by the discoveries of modern science, although, such a sweeping statement by the devout may sound puerile to the scientific community.