God usually acts in this world through secondary causes – what does this mean?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Question.
Can you explain God as the primary cause and the secondary causes through which God acts? Answer. Let’s consider the verse Mayadhyakshena prakruti suyate saccharacharam hetu na nena kaunteya jagad viparivartate So mayadhyakshena prakruti I, everything happens, material nature operates under my supervision. suyate saccharacharam suyate, that things are produced in various ways within, saccharacharam, all kinds of moving and non-moving things hetu na nena kaunteya hetu ananena by this cause jagad viparivartate, the world gets transformed, the world moves around.
Krishna says he oversees material nature, which by its own order produces everything. So here we see that Krishna is saying that material nature is the cause and he is the overseer. So this suggests that Krishna is acting through something else.
That is, Krishna is the secondary cause of those things. See, when Krishna is the primary cause of something, for example, when he is there on the earth and when the snake weapon is being charged, is being directed toward Arjuna by Karna, Krishna suddenly stands up and Krishna suddenly pushes the chariot down so that the snake weapon hits Arjuna’s crown rather than his neck. So that is Krishna directly acting.
And often when Krishna acts directly as the primary cause, that is what we call as a miracle. Say, for example, when Krishna covers the sun so that Arjuna can reach Jayadrath. These are extraordinary events, but normally Krishna acts through secondary causes.
That means it is his will, by his will certain things act and those action of those things makes his will manifest in the world. So consider somebody, some artist who himself makes certain things, an artist who trains other artists to do things expertly. So now the second artist will be much more effective because many more people will be able to do things and it will often require much greater talent to train other people to do things.
So quite often people feel that it will be easier for me to do this myself rather than to involve somebody else because it’s just so messy to involve others. So when Krishna gets his will done through various agents, and we saw those agents as the secondary causes through which he is acting. So consider, for example, the mechanism by which rains happen.
Now Krishna says that it is he who gives rains. In the ninth chapter he says that. But now Bhagavatam itself is also familiar with the mechanism at how the sun evaporates the ocean, water forms clouds and the clouds condense and rains occur.
And this is compared to how a king should take taxes from the wealthy and then give charity to the needy. Just like the cloud takes water from the ocean and gives it to the vast areas of the land. So the point is that Krishna, the Bhagavatam is not unaware of the mechanism.
So the mechanism is an explanation at one particular level. And we understand that God has created this mechanism and he is the secondary cause. Rather he is acting through the secondary cause.
So there is, when medicines act, consider Ayurveda, when certain medicines act to cure people, then Ayurveda is in many ways theistic, where people pray for, the theistic physicians pray to God for help. But simultaneously they also give the particular medication and they understand that it is God who will act through that medication. So the idea here is that there is no need to reject the principle of material causality in order to accept God.
And there is no need to reject God because of the principle of material causality. Both can go together harmoniously if we understand that the system of material causality is set by God. So once we understand this point, then we can see the glory of God in everything.
So when God acts through the secondary causes, that indicates, appreciating the mechanism does not detract from God’s glory, but it enhances his glory because it shows how he is competent enough to organize complicated factors to work in a harmonious way. So just like if a head of state is very competent, then everything is managed and the head of state does not need to be involved. Okay, you do this, you do this, everything happens competently.
So in this way, if we understand that God is acting through secondary causes, then there can be harmony of science and spirituality, that science studies the secondary causes, the mechanisms, and spirituality focuses on the primary cause, how the mechanism, or not how things happen, but why is this mechanism set up at all.