THE PARADOX OF CAUSATION
Dialogue 12GS: In physics we have certain unsolved problems: If the world is fully causal,
you cannot change anything. If the world is not fully causal, you cannot find any
laws for such a world. Either the world is causal or it is not. If you think of cause
and effect as one single entity, if all the world is one and there is no separation
into pieces, then of course there is no cause and effect.
If the whole universe is physical and suffers physical laws, then you have no
choice. In the case of purely physical things, there are no options. Even if the
soul, or whatever it is, were different from the kind of things that we are talking
about, it still would have no special significance if it were subject to physical
laws. You cannot say that there is no cause-effect relationship because it is not
natural. You cannot also accept cause and effect because then there would be no
control over it, and so what would be the point in saying that? This is the
paradox. What is the way out of this paradox?
K: Are you talking of karma?
GS: No. The physical universe is closed; there is no movement here at all.
K: All this implies time, does it not? That is, anything put together, horizontally
or vertically, is time. Cause and effect are in time. Cause becoming effect, and
the effect becoming the cause are all within the field of time. Whether I move my
hand up this way or move my hand that way, that is, whether the movement is
horizontal or vertical, it is within the field of time. Are you asking, sir: Can we
move out of time?
GS: No. The experience of a physical law is within time. One does not ask
questions within that law. And what option does one have?
K: None at all. You can operate within the prison, but that would always be
within the field of time; cause-effect and effect-cause are within the field of time.
Memory, experience, knowledge are within time, and thought is the response of
all that. If I have no memory, I cannot think; I will be in a state of amnesia. And
thought is the response of memory. Thinking is within the field of time because it
is put together through experience, knowledge, memory—and memory is part of
the brain cells.
So thought can never move out of the field of time, because thought is never
free; thought is always old. In the interval between two thoughts, one may come
upon something new, and translate it in terms of time. There is a gap between
two thoughts; in that interval there might be a different perception. The
translation of that perception is time, but the perception itself is not of time.