“Chaos vs Cosmos” (SB 3.9.16)

TRANSCRIPT:  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto 3, Chapter 9, Text 16. “Chaos vs Cosmos.” Alachua – September 1, 1995 / (079)

[Text 16]:

Your Lordship is the prime root of the tree of the planetary systems. This tree has grown by first penetrating the material nature in three trunks – as me, Śiva and You, the Almighty – for creation, maintenance and dissolution, and we three have grown with many branches. Therefore I offer my obeisances unto You, the tree of the cosmic manifestation. 

Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:

The cosmic manifestation is grossly divided into three worlds, the upper, lower and middle planetary systems, and then it broadens into the cosmos of fourteen planetary systems, with the manifestation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead as the supreme root. Material nature, which appears to be the cause of the cosmic manifestation, is only the agency or energy of the Lord. This is confirmed in Bhagavad-gītā (9.10): mayādhyakṣeṇa prakṛtiḥ sūyate sa-carācaram. “Only under the superintendence of the Supreme Lord does material nature appear to be the cause of all creation, maintenance and dissolution.” The Lord expands Himself into three — Viṣṇu, Brahmā and Śiva — for maintenance, creation and destruction respectively. Of the three principal agents controlling the three modes of material nature, Viṣṇu is the Almighty; even though He is within material nature for the purpose of maintenance, He is not controlled by the laws of material nature. The other two, Brahmā and Śiva, although almost as greatly powerful as Viṣṇu, are within the control of the material energy of the Supreme Lord. The conception of many gods controlling the many departments of material nature is ill conceived of by the foolish pantheist. God is one without a second, and He is the primal cause of all causes. As there are many departmental heads of governmental affairs, so there are many heads of management of the universal affairs.

Due to a poor fund of knowledge, the impersonalist does not believe in the personal management of things as they are. But in this verse it is clearly explained that everything is personal and nothing is impersonal. We have already discussed this point in the Introduction, and it is confirmed here in this verse. The tree of the material manifestation is described in the Fifteenth Chapter of Bhagavad-gītā as an aśvattha tree whose root is upward. We have actual experience of such a tree when we see the shadow of a tree on the bank of a reservoir of water. The reflection of the tree on the water appears to hang down from its upward roots. The tree of creation described here is only a shadow of the reality which is Parabrahman, Viṣṇu. In the internal potency manifested in the Vaikuṇṭhalokas, the actual tree exists, and the tree reflected in the material nature is only the shadow of this actual tree. The impersonalists’ theory that Brahman is void of all variegatedness is false because the shadow-tree described in Bhagavad-gītā cannot exist without being the reflection of a real tree. The real tree is situated in the eternal existence of spiritual nature, full of transcendental varieties, and Lord Viṣṇu is the root of that tree also. The root is the same – the Lord – both for the real tree and the false, but the false tree is only the perverted reflection of the real tree. The Lord, being the real tree, is here offered obeisances by Brahmā on his own behalf and also on behalf of Lord Śiva.

om ajñāna-timirāndhasya

jñānāñjana-śalākayā

cakṣur unmīlitaṁ yena

tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ 

śrī-caitanya-mano-'bhīṣṭaṁ sthāpitaṁ yena bhū-tale

svayaṁ rūpaḥ kadā mahyaṁ dadāti sva-padāntikam

The translation: 

Your Lordship is the prime root of the tree of the planetary systems. This tree has grown by first penetrating the material nature in three trunks — as me, Śiva and You, the Almighty – for creation, maintenance and dissolution, and we three have grown with many branches. Therefore I offer my obeisances unto You, the tree of the cosmic manifestation.

So, Śrīla Prabhupāda points out that this tree is also mentioned in the Bhagavad-gītā where it's stated that there is a banyan tree that has its roots going upward. This analogy is interesting. It is said there that the twigs in this banyan tree represent the objects of the senses. So, you could think of the twigs of the tree as the end products of that tree. So this material, inverted tree results in the production of objects of the material senses.

[5:07]

It's also stated that the leaves of the tree are the Vedic hymns, which is interesting because in an actual tree, the leaves provide sustenance for the tree by performing photosynthesis. And likewise in the material universe, the Vedic hymns are sources of sustenance for persons who are following the karma-kāṇḍa system. It's also stated that this tree has roots that go down, in addition to the roots that go up. So, since the tree is upside down, the roots going downwards would be an anomaly. And in fact, these are rooted in the fruitive actions of the living beings. So, what is being stated there is that this tree, in one sense, has two causes: One is the original root, which is the Supreme Personality of Godhead from whom the tree is emanating. And there's also a causal factor in the fruitive desires and activities of the living beings, who are within this tree of the material universe. So, their activities are also a cause of the tree. 

So, this tree is a reflection. And Śrīla Prabhupāda gives the example of a tree seen reflected on the bank of a reservoir of water. So the reflection is there because there's a real tree that is standing upright on the bank, otherwise you couldn't have that reflection. Actually to see the reflected tree, three things are needed. You have to have the real tree, and then there's the surface of water which serves as a mirror, and then there's the observer who sees the reflection.

The real tree corresponds to Kṛṣṇa and the spiritual world, which eternally exists. The mirror: in the Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīla Prabhupāda compares that with desire. It also could be compared with the mahat-tattva, or the material energy because that serves as the agency of producing the reflection. And in order for the reflection to actually be perceived, you have to have living beings whose senses are linked up with the material manifestation. So, this reflected tree has a structure and form by virtue of the fact that the original tree in the spiritual world also has structure and form.

If you look at the example of the reflection from a pond, you can see that water by itself does not have the potency to generate a complex structure like this tree. It merely serves as the medium by which the information contained in the original tree is projected to the senses of the individual living entities. Likewise the material energy does not by itself have the power to generate the complex material manifestation. In fact, if you look at the material energy as understood in modern scientific terms, it's really a little bit hard to see why this energy should organize itself to form a world of living beings.

The modern scientific viewpoint is that cause and effect are limited to material elements basically pushing one another. For example, if you have one billiard ball, another billiard ball can be moving and collide with it. In that case, the first billiard ball starts moving in a certain direction. So one way to look at material energy that you find in modern science is that it's made of many little particles that you could think of as billiard balls and they're all just interacting with one another. In addition to bouncing against one another, there are forces of attraction and different simple laws of interaction. But basically what it amounts to is simple pushes and pulls between elementary particles. So, if the only cause and effect within nature is simply these simple pushes and pulls and interactions, then why is it that nature is organized as we see in a system of very complex structures such as the bodies of the living entities. So, the scientists really don't have an explanation for that.

[10:14]  

The explanation that is given is based on, ultimately, the idea of chance: that particles will just happen to come together into a form which can function as a complicated machine and then make copies of itself. And as the copies change due to accidents in their genetic system, some of these accidents will produce improvements and the result is that those improved machines will work better and they will take over within the material domain and replace the less effective machines. So, this is the theory.

According to this theory, the only kind of causation that you have to have in the material universe is the causation – or cause and effect – of the little particles interacting with one another. And everything else comes about automatically then through an evolutionary process. The problem, though, with this theory is that you cannot account for the origin of the machines that are then going to survive in the material situation. It can be shown that it's highly improbable for actual improvements to take place. Although on a small scale, some improvements could take place by chance. If you look at the actual complexity of the machinery of the living organisms, you see that chance is not sufficient to account for these different mechanisms. In any case, that's an elaborate topic of discussion. But it would appear that there's a need for some causal factor other than material cause and effect within the domain of the material energy.

The Vedic literature describes this tree in which the root is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So, Kṛṣṇa is the original cause of the tree. It's explained in this verse that He divides Himself into three forms – Viṣṇu, Brahmā, and Śiva – for the purposes of maintenance, creation, and destruction. So one feature of the material tree is that it is temporary. The spiritual tree is eternally existing. But the material tree only exists in a temporary form.

You can extend the analogy of the tree reflected from the pond by considering that on a pond you can only see a reflection if the water is very smooth. But, if a wind comes up and the surface of the water becomes very rough with waves and ripples, then you can no longer see any reflection, even though the original reflected tree is still standing on the bank. But then again, if the water calms down, you can see the reflection again.

This is an analogy to the fact that the perverted tree, the material reflection, is temporary. It is brought into existence within the mahat-tattva and maintained for some time; and then again, it's annihilated; but then again, it's brought into existence. The mahat-tattva is always existing, or at least the external energy of Kṛṣṇa, which produces the mahat-tattva, is eternally existing. But the organized manifestation of the universe appears and disappears according to the control of the Supreme Lord.

The manifestation of the universe is very ingeniously contrived so that it looks as though everything is running automatically. But in fact, as Śrīla Prabhupāda points out, the material energy is being controlled by the Supreme Personality of Godhead so that everything is taking place under spiritual control. Kṛṣṇa has arranged the universe so that it has a hierarchical structure. Śrīla Prabhupāda refers here to the different departmental heads. So, in the Vedic literature it is described that there are many demigods within the material energy who have managerial roles in controlling the universe. The universe is actually a cosmos as opposed to a chaotic system. These are two words coming from Greek. But cosmos actually means an organized universe with intelligent guidance behind it.

[15:19]

Nowadays there's the science of cosmology. But the modern day scientists aren't really talking about the cosmos. Their concept of reality is chaos in which everything is just happening helter-skelter with no particular law or order, and somehow things just come out by an evolutionary process. But the actual universe is being controlled, and it is arranged in a hierarchical fashion with a universal government. So, Śrīla Prabhupāda points out here that due to a poor fund of knowledge, the impersonalist does not believe in the personal management of things as they are. So, we're basically seeing only part of the material manifestation. 

You can make another analogy here of a person using, let us say, a tool to accomplish some task. Like you could use a hammer to drive in a nail, let's say. So if someone has only a very limited understanding of what is happening, they may see the head of the hammer striking the nail. And so they may be able to form a very accurate theory describing how the hammer drives in the nail, complete with analysis of momentum and, let's see: force equals mass times acceleration. You can apply that rule, by the way, to the nail and so forth. But, if they present this as a complete theory, then it's a serious mistake because in fact, they're leaving out the person who's doing the hammering. Similarly, the modern scientific viewpoint looks at the universe in the middle, so to speak. One observes different patterns of cause and effect. And one can study these very carefully and learn a lot about them. But if one assumes that they represent the ultimate cause, that is a mistake.

Likewise, the impersonal philosophers are looking at things in the middle. They look at the material manifestation, see that it seems to be occurring in an impersonal fashion, and ultimately they arrive at an impersonal conclusion regarding the ultimate cause of the material manifestation. Basically, you could say that the impersonal philosophy would be like having a mirror reflection from water, but nothing to reflect. Somehow the reflection is just there. Either it organizes itself or, according to the Māyāvādī philosophy, somehow it's there, but it's not really there. And ultimately that's incomprehensible. So it is beyond words. This is the ultimate refuge of the impersonalists. First they say something, and then they say it's beyond words.

So, let's see. The verse refers to the planetary systems. Śrīla Prabhupāda has referred to this tree of the material universe in many different contexts. Interestingly enough, it is also described in connection with the structure of the physical universe as described in the Fifth Canto. According to this understanding, the root of the tree is towards the pole star, and the branches extend down from the pole star. Śrīla Prabhupāda has described the entire physical universe in this sense as an inverted tree with the planets being at the tips of the branches. So, that's another aspect of the tree analogy. So, are there any questions or comments? Yeah. 

Question:  [unclear] 

[20:25]

Answer:  Yes. This is what is commonly called Deism: the idea of God as the clockmaker Who wound up the clock and set it in motion and left because it's a good clock, and it keeps time nicely. So, there's no need for further adjustments. So, that concept is there. But in fact, that is not the concept presented in the Vedic literature.

The Vedic concept involves direct control by the Supreme Personality of Godhead in quite a number of different ways. For example, there is control from what you might call the micro level. Kṛṣṇa is present within every atom and He is controlling things at that level. Then on the level of universal government, He's controlling things through the system of the demigods. So, the control takes place in a subtle fashion, and so it is not easy to directly see Kṛṣṇa controlling things. 

We could make an analogy that... I gave the example of the hammer, which is a fairly simple example. But you can imagine something involving a more complex machine. Let's take the famous hammer for pounding in railroad spikes. Once upon a time there was a fellow, what was his name? John Henry. Yeah. Who engaged in a contest with a railroad spike hammering machine, and the machine beat him, thus proving the superiority of machines. So, in any case there, if you initially analyze the hammerhead hitting the spike, you can form a theory. But then you can go back a little ways and now you'll come into the machinery of the device and you'll find that there are all kinds of gears and levers and so forth. So, as you go back further and further, you seem to just come to more and more complex machinery. And so you may be tempted to conclude that: Well, everything is occurring just by a mechanical process. But ultimately there is a person who built the machine and who is running the machine.

So similarly, in the material universe many complex processes are there that are occurring in an impersonal fashion, but behind them, ultimately, there is personal control. Now, if you propose that the personal control only existed at the beginning of the universe and everything just ran automatically from then on, that contradicts a number of things.

One is the very idea of a personal relationship between a person in the material world and in the spiritual world, because you would have to say that your actions of devotional service in the material world were somehow preprogrammed from the very beginning of the universe. Everything is just running like a perfect machine. And that is a rather awkward way of considering the idea of serving Kṛṣṇa and obtaining some response in the form of spiritual advancement and so forth. The actual Vedic model is that Kṛṣṇa responds to his devotees, and for that matter, He responds to the desires of materially motivated persons. And this means that He has to be continually manipulating the material energy even though He does this in a very subtle way, which is difficult to trace out. 

Q:    [unclear]

A:  Go ahead.

Q:  So, when you say it's difficult to trace out… [unclear] 

[25:08]  

A:  Looking at material energy, it would be difficult to show because you'd have to keep tracing things back. For example, you can look at gross material energy, which is what scientists do. Then you can trace things back a ways and go to the subtle level of material energy. We know that the subtle energies control the gross energies. So, you could study that, and that brings you into the whole domain of the paranormal and so on. But ultimately you may conclude that subtle energy is just working automatically, and that's the ultimate cause. That's like working your way back into the spike hammering machine and finding all kinds of gears and levers in there and saying, "Aha, that's the cause." So you could keep tracing it back ultimately to the level of, say, Brahmā. 

Brahmā himself was probably in a better position to do that than we are. And it said that he tried to trace things back, and he figured out that the source must be lying in the root of the lotus flower from which he had emerged. So, he began tracing back the stem of the lotus flower, but he was unable to succeed in that effort. Of course, ultimately Lord Viṣṇu revealed himself to Brahmā and said, "Well, I am the ultimate cause." And then Brahmā could see by virtue of Lord Viṣṇu's mercy. But when he tried to trace things back, even he wasn't able to do it.

At the same time, we can understand from the Vedic literature, and it would seem to me from common sense, that some kind of intelligent control is ultimately necessary. And if you try to arrive at a material understanding of what intelligence is, that always becomes difficult. You always find something missing in the explanation. 

Q:  Two things. One is that tracing back and not finding a… [unclear] 

A:  Yes, it's true. The point is made that in our present day and age, we may not be as inclined to think that there's an ultimate personal controller because we don't even see the minor personal controllers, namely the demigods. All we see is impersonal manifestations of matter. So therefore we'd be more inclined to think that matter must be the ultimate cause. Whereas if we could see the demigods, as people did in earlier ages, then we might be more inclined to think that there's an ultimate personal cause at the top of the whole system, as presumably the case. Although impersonalists have an ability to even say that: Well, ultimately the demigods have an impersonal cause, because if we ask what a living body is, we find impersonal factors within it. And so one can still say that there's an ultimate impersonal cause. Of course, the impersonalists even want to say that Kṛṣṇa is a manifestation of an impersonal cause. That's the ultimate aparādha of the impersonalist. Yeah.

Q:  The example of the universe as a tree. It could have been said that they're floating… [unclear] would indicate that there's some transfer of nutrients or something like that from the root. So, is there any example of that? Movement between the planets and the root. Otherwise, the tree example doesn't quite fit.

A:  Well, the tree example in its general abstract form says that the root is, of course, Lord Viṣṇu. And of course, Lord Viṣṇu is everywhere. So in that sense, you don't have an actual three-dimensional tree because the root is everywhere. But it's a root in the causal sense, that Lord Viṣṇu is the source of all the manifestations. And in that sense one would have to say there is a transfer of nutrients, in the sense that all of the energy is coming from Lord Viṣṇu, which is driving the whole system. Otherwise the system wouldn't run. But when it comes to the application of the tree analogy to the physical universe, where it is said that the root is towards the polestar, well, there again, if you look at the structure of the universe described in the Fifth Canto we see that Brahmaloka is in that direction, towards the polestar. And Dhruvaloka is a Vaikuṇṭha planet within the universe, which is the pole star. So it seems as though the control center and source of direction for the universe must be in that direction. So, you can say the root logically is there, and energy and control are coming down from that root. So this would say that if you look in that direction at night, that's where it's coming from.