Cause and Effect (Skt. कार्य-कारण Karya-Karana or कर्म Law of Karma) is the principle that governs the orderly progression of events within the world of experience. It is the logical relationship that connects a prior event (cause) to a subsequent event (effect).

Logical Relations in Memory

Cause and effect is one of the primary ways the mind organizes and classifies raw experiences in the memory.

• Answering "Why": The relationship of cause and effect is formed in the memory to answer the "why" questions about the world and our experiences.

• Survival Mechanism: This relationship allows us to predict the consequences of our actions. Knowing that one event leads to another enables the organism to seek food, avoid danger, and survive elegantly.

• Algorithmic Flow: In the physical universe, many processes are tightly bound and happen in a highly ordered, sequential way. This predictable flow is experienced as cause and effect.

Transcendence of the Self

While the illusion of the world runs on the law of cause and effect, the true Self is completely free from it.

• Uncaused Experiencer: The experiencer is unborn, changeless, and eternal. It cannot be produced by any cause, nor does it act as a cause to produce effects.

• No Doership: self realisation reveals that the individual is not the doer of actions. Actions happen automatically through the body-mind mechanism according to physical and mental causes, while the Self remains the silent witness.

• Breaking the Chain: By abiding in the causeless witness, the seeker breaks the chain of cause and effect (the loop of karma and samsara) that binds them to the illusion.

See also

Causality, karma, memory, action, experiencer, samsara.