Causality (Skt. कार्यकारणभाव Karya-Karana-Bhava) is the logical and sequential relationship between a cause and its effect. On the path of knowledge, causality is understood as a conceptual framework created by the mind to organize and interpret experience.

Causality in the Illusion

In the relative world of name and form, causality is a necessary and highly useful tool.

• Mental Abstraction: Causality is not a physical entity. It is a logical relation formed in the memory to answer "why" questions about changes in the world.

• Predictability and Survival: The mind maps cause-and-effect relations to predict outcomes, enabling effective action and ensuring physical survival. Without this, the world would appear as random chaos.

Causality and Existence

The concept of causality completely fails when applied to existence as a whole.

• Existence is Uncaused: Existence is the sum total of all that is. If we assume a cause for Existence, that cause must exist prior to it. However, by definition, anything that exists is already part of Existence. Thus, Existence cannot have an external cause.

• Self-Contained: There are no causes or reasons outside the one Existence. It is uncaused, timeless, and contains all causes within itself.

The Causeless Witness

The experiencer (the Self) is also completely beyond causality.

• No Causal Link: The experience cannot produce the Experiencer. There is no causal chain between the changing objects of experience and the changeless witness of those experiences.

• Immutability: Since the Experiencer is changeless, no transformation or causal process can take place within it. It is eternally uncaused.

See also

Cause and effect, existence, memory, experiencer, time, processes.