Posted on: 18 Nov 2022
[Dr. JSR Prasad asked: Sashtanga pranams Swami. Please explain ‘Nāsadāsīnno sadāsīt’ hymn existing in the 10th mandala of the Rigveda. -At Your divine holy lotus feet]
Swami Replied: The verb ‘āsīt’ means the situation that happened in the past and it denotes the situation of the beginning which was before creation. Before creation, we have to speak about the states of both cause and effect. The cause was God Who was both material and intellectual. The effect or product is this creation. In taking examples as similes to explain about the creation of this world by God, several examples stand. The best example is given by Adi Shankara. He has given two examples 1. A magician creating magic (Māyāvīva vijṛmbhayatyapi) and 2. A Godly person creating a worldly object (Mahāyogīva yassvecchayā). The first example is very near the concept and the second example is the concept itself. The first example is a familiar worldly example and the second example is a rare example. It is like showing a very tiny star, ‘Arundhati’, by showing its near visible star called ‘Vashishtha’ (Arundhatī Vaśiṣṭa nyāya).
First, we have to talk about the status of these two (cause and effect) regarding their existence. The existence is of two types:- 1. Absolute reality that exists in both of these two types, 2. The relative reality that is inherently unreal but, shines as absolute reality due to the gifted existence of the absolute reality. Finally, three states result:- 1. Absolute reality, 2. Relative reality and 3. Absolute unreality. Now let us describe the status of God. God is absolute reality, in Whom relative reality and absolute unreality are absent. The next item is creation which has two situations. In the first situation, the creation was absolute unreality before it was created. After its creation, the creation was granted absolute reality by the absolutely real God. Hence, before creation, the world is absolute unreality in which absolute reality and relative reality are absent. The creation after creation, is relative reality in which absolute unreality is absent but, the creation possesses the absolute reality. This is the situation in the beginning of the creation of this world.
Let us see how this Vedic statement applies in the cases of both God and world, before and after creation of the world.
1. Before creation of the world:- God existed as absolute reality and neither relative reality nor absolute unreality existed then. This means God is not absolutely unreal (Nāsadāsīt) and the relative reality also did not exist in God (No sadāsīt).
2. After creation:- The world existed in which absolute unreality was not there (Nāsadāsīt) and God’s absolute reality did not exist in the world because the world is inherently unreal (No sadāsīt). This means that the world is having absolute reality in the sense that such absolute reality is not the inherent absolute reality of the world. Since the gifted absolute reality is not the inherent property of the world, it is told that the world is not having absolute reality.