A Universe of Meaning, A Void of Mechanism: The Indian Way

By the druid Finn

1. What “non-mechanistic thinking” means in the context of Vedantic monism

By non-mechanistic I mean:

· The world is explained not by impersonal, value-neutral laws or procedures,

· but by ritual order, moral law, consciousness, will, and teleology.

Causality is primarily:

· sacrificial (do the rite, get the rain),

· moral (do good, get good results),

· experiential (realize the Self, escape bondage),

—not procedural in the sense of rule-bound emergence from underlying dynamics.

Indian thought certainly has “laws” (ṛta, dharma, karma), but they are normative and purposive, not mechanical recipes by which reality self-organises.

The genealogy below shows how that orientation persists from the Veda through Vedānta and Tantra: India repeatedly finds order, but almost never a mechanism.

2. Vedic beginnings: Ṛta, yajña, and the ritual cosmos

The earliest layer, the Ṛgveda and related Saṃhitās, imagine a universe held together by Ṛta—“order, rhythm, rule; truth; logos.” Ṛta is the principle that “regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it.”

But Ṛta is not a physical law in the modern sense. It is simultaneously:

· natural order,

· moral order,

· sacrificial order.

It is maintained through yajña (sacrifice). Early Vedic ritual centres on sacrifice performed on a temporary altar (vedi), not on permanent temples. Fire (Agni) is the messenger between human and divine realms, carrying offerings upward; yajña is “performed to maintain cosmic order, build a relationship with the divine, and for material and spiritual benefits,” rooted in “reciprocity and exchange between humans and deities.”

This world-picture is non-mechanistic in three ways:

1. Order is relational, not structural. Cosmos is held together by a relationship of exchange between humans and gods.

2. Causality is ritual, not procedural. If you perform the correct rite with the right formula, rain comes. There is no attempt to model how the rite causally produces weather.

3. Explanation is symbolic. Hymns encode correspondences (fire–sun–breath–speech), not operational models.

Already, Indian thinking is committed to a value-saturated universe. There is no neutral “mechanism.” There is Ṛta, upheld by gods and humans through ritually encoded behaviour.

3. Internalisation: Upaniṣadic monism without mechanism

The Upaniṣads inherit this Vedic world but re-orient it inward. Instead of asking “How do we maintain cosmic order through sacrifice?” they ask:

· What is the ultimate reality?

· What is the self?

· How does knowledge liberate?

The famous creation sentence of Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.2.1 says:

“Before this world was manifest there was only existence, one without a second.”

Here we meet advitīya (“without a second”), not advaita as a doctrinal term. The text asserts a primordial unity (sat), from which multiplicity arises. But note what it does not do:

· It does not articulate how the One becomes the many.

· It does not specify laws, dynamics, or structural rules.

· It does not give an emergence theory of differentiation.

The Upaniṣads introduce monistic slogans:

· sarvaṃ khalvidaṃ brahma – “All this is Brahman.”

· tat tvam asi – “That thou art.”

· ayam ātmā brahma – “This Self is Brahman.”

But these are identity sentences, not mechanistic models. They belong more to experiential phenomenology (“this is what is ultimately realized”) than to physics or cosmology.

Even the early doctrine of karma remains non-mechanistic. Karma becomes a “system in which advantageous effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions,” shaping rebirth across lives. But this is moral causality, not energetic causality: the linkage is ethical and soteriological, not physically spelled out.

Thus the Upaniṣadic innovation is:

· Monism at the level of Being,

· Ethical-karmic law at the level of life,

but no explicit mechanism connecting One Being to many beings.

4. Dharma and karma as moral–cosmic law, not physical law

As Vedic religion transitions into classical Hindu frameworks, Ṛta morphs into Dharma and its companion, Karma.

In Hindu usage, dharma denotes behaviour “in accord with Ṛta—the ‘order and custom’ that makes life and universe possible,” including “duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues, and ethics.” Etymologically from dhṛ (“to uphold”), dharma is “that which supports, preserves, and maintains harmony, in the cosmos and within the self.”

Karma, in turn, becomes “the universal causal law by which good or bad actions determine the future modes of an individual’s existence,” an “ethical dimension” of rebirth.

Notice the pattern:

· Dharma: cosmic order as ethical law.

· Karma: causality as moral retribution and reward.

Causality is conceptualised first and foremost as a moral architecture of the universe. It is still non-mechanistic: what binds act and result is not an articulated dynamic but a morally charged, quasi-juridical order.

This is a different universe from one governed by impersonal physical laws; it is governed by ought-structure, not is-mechanics.

5. Śramaṇa movements and classical schools: still non-mechanistic

The so-called śramaṇa traditions—Buddhism, Jainism, Ajivikas—introduce new vocabularies, but still within a non-mechanistic style.

· Buddhism replaces sacrificial ritual with dependent origination and mental processes; the causal chain is psychological and experiential, not mechanical.

· Jainism has a highly elaborate ontology of substances and karmic “dust,” but karmic particles are still understood in an ethically saturated context—glued to the soul by passion and violence, not by neutral forces.

Even when we turn to more “philosophical” systems like Sāṃkhya, the pattern remains.

The Sāṃkhyakārikā lays out a dualism of Prakṛti (unconscious primordial nature) and Puruṣa (pure consciousness). All reality is composed of this primordial pair. Prakṛti evolves through 25 tattvas, driven by the disequilibrium of three guṇas (sattva, rajas, tamas).

This looks almost mechanistic—but only almost.

· Prakṛti’s evolution is qualitative, based on a mythic triad of “qualities,” not on general laws of motion.

· Puruṣa is “neither created nor creative and does not evolve. It simply exists.”

· The conjunction of Prakṛti and Puruṣa is illustrated by the allegory of the blind and the lame: each dependent on the other to move.

So even here:

· Causality is teleological: the purpose of the union is enjoyment and eventual liberation.

· The ontology is explicitly built to support a soteriological project (kaivalya), not an explanatory physics.

Yoga, as codified by Patañjali, merely weaponises this into a method: nirodha (cessation of mental fluctuations) for the sake of liberation. Again, procedure is psychological and ascetical, not cosmological.

Nyāya–Vaiśeṣika do move toward more analytic accounts—atoms, categories, inference—yet these too are subordinated to the project of valid knowledge and ultimately liberation; the “laws” of atoms are never generalised into a fully mechanistic cosmology.

6. Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta: scriptural order over natural order

Mīmāṃsā represents the purest ritual-hermeneutic system: reality is structured by the Veda itself. The key concern is: What must be done? The “laws” are Vedic injunctions; causality is the linking of correct ritual action to promised Vedic result across lifetimes. There is no interest in mechanisms behind the ritual economy.

Vedānta inherits both the Upaniṣadic monism and this Mīmāṃsā habit of reading cosmic structure off scripture rather than off nature. The crucial shift toward non-mechanistic idealism comes with Gauḍapāda and Śaṅkara.

· Gauḍapāda’s Māṇḍūkya Kārikā declares that “the philosophy of non-dualism is true philosophy” because it avoids contradiction and conflict.

· In Śaṅkara’s Advaita, avidyā is defined as adhyāsa, superimposition—like “mistaking a rope for a snake.”

· Māyā is “liable to change,” while Brahman is unchanging; māyā and its name-and-form differences are ultimately indescribable (anirvacanīya).

This is metaphysical brilliance precisely in the direction of non-mechanism:

· The world’s plurality is not explained; it is devalued as appearance.

· The link between Brahman and the world is explicitly said to be beyond description.

· The goal of the system is to dissolve the question “How does the One produce the many?” rather than answer it.

Advaita thus takes the already non-mechanistic Upaniṣadic monism and makes it even more anti-procedural: there cannot be a mechanism, because the level at which one would describe it is itself declared illusory.

7. Bhakti and the Gītā: personal will over law

The Bhagavad Gītā integrates karma, dharma, and devotion under a theistic umbrella. In an often-quoted passage (10.42), Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna:

“Simply know that I support this entire universe with a single fragment of Myself.”

Here cosmic order is grounded in personal divine support. The universe is sustained not by autonomous mechanisms, but by the presence and will of God.

Bhakti traditions generalise this:

· The world as līlā (divine play),

· The soul as servant or lover of God,

· Salvation as surrender, remembrance, love.

The more bhakti intensifies, the more explanation becomes personalistic: “Why does X happen?” — Because of the Lord’s will, mercy, testing, or play. Again, that is not a mechanism; it is a theologically thick narrative.

8. Tantra and Kashmir Śaivism: spanda, vibration of consciousness

Tantric and non-dual Śaiva traditions at first glance seem more “dynamic” and world-affirming, but they remain thoroughly non-mechanistic.

Kashmir Śaivism, for example, centres on spanda, often glossed as “vibration” or “vibrative volition” of consciousness. One formulation describes spanda as “the spiritual stirring of Consciousness whose essential nature is a simultaneous inward and outward vibration.”

Another summary: “All that exists is a single, undivided, all-encompassing reality… Spanda signifies a vibrating consciousness.”

But spanda is explicitly not a physical oscillation; it is a metaphor for conscious dynamism. The entire ontology is built out of consciousness + power, articulated into a hierarchy of tattvas. The “vibration” is mystical and experiential, not a proto-field theory.

Again we see:

· A unitary reality,

· Qualified by consciousness and creative stir,

· Explaining differentiation symbolically, not mechanistically.

Spanda is a gorgeous concept, but not a mechanism in the sense of articulated rules of transformation.

9. Structural diagnosis: the deep pattern of non-mechanistic thinking

Across this genealogy, certain constants appear:

1. Order is normative, not neutral.

o Ṛta, dharma, karma, and even spanda are value-loaded: moral, ritual, or soteriological. They are not merely descriptive regularities.

2. Causality is moral or symbolic.

o Sacrifice brings rain; virtue brings good rebirth; ignorance projects illusion; devotion draws grace. The “because” is ethical or psychological, not mechanical.

3. Consciousness outranks matter.

o Whether in Puruṣa/Prakṛti duality, Advaita’s Brahman, or Śaiva consciousness, the ultimate ground is sentient and non-procedural.

4. Soteriology outruns ontology.

o Systems are calibrated to solve the problem of suffering and bondage, not to model the dynamics of emergence. Explanations are judged by their capacity to liberate, not to predict.

5. Unity is asserted, not operationalised.

o The Upaniṣadic One, Advaita’s non-dual consciousness, Śaiva spanda—all give a picture of unity, but not the algorithm by which unity becomes multiplicity under constraints.

So India indeed “found the One” very early. But in every major tradition, the One functions as:

· a metaphysical background,

· a source of meaning,

· a locus of experience,

not as a generator with explicit rules of operation.

That is the sense in which Indian thought is non-mechanistic: it discovers unity and law-likeness at the level of meaning and value, but does not translate those into a precise account of how realities emerge and behave under determinate constraints.

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