When Svetaketu came back to his home after receiving knowledge from the Gurukul, he became very proud of it. He came to his house and sat there arrogantly without even talking to his father. His father, Uddalaka, seeing this became worried. He thought what has happened to his son. Why is he not talking and sitting there arrogantly. Uddalaka approached his son Svetaketu and asked, 'Have you learned everything?" Svetaketu replied, "Yes, father." Uddalaka again asked him, "Have you learned about that One thing by knowing it you know everything?" Svetaketu was perplexed. His guru in the Gurukul never talked about that One thing. He had learned all the Vedas, Puranas, and Chandas but have not heard anywhere about this One thing. Svetaketu's arrogant and proud suddenly dropped and he humbly said, "No, father. I haven't heard anything like this before. What is this One thing you talking about?"

Then starts the Chhandogya Upanishad.

Can anything come out of nothing? Have you ever seen rain without clouds? Can being come out of Non-Being? Is this possible? It will be absurd even to think about it. If this is the case, then, is Being the cause of the Being? This is like asking is fire cause of fire? Is chair cause of chair? This is a meaningless question. So, the creation cannot come out of nothing or non-being. Creation (Being) cannot also be the cause of Being, since saying water is the cause of water makes no sense at all. If Being and Non-Being both are not the cause of this creation, then what is the cause? There is no cause AT ALL. Is creation really there as a solid objective reality? If there is no cause of this creation, then what exactly is it? The answer to this question is the crux of Advaita Vedanta.

Before, understanding the term Advaita, we must observe closely the phenomenon of cause and effect relationship because the idea of creation solely depends on cause and effect relationship. Are cause and effect different? If they are different, cause is not really the cause of the effect. Then, are they same? If they are same, why do we even bother to denote it saying cause and effect? We are in a dilemma here ! We are caught in both ways.

Hope you realize this One thing which is indescribable, which senses cannot perceive, which is beyond scientific investigation, which is beyond mind and intellect. However, there is a way to understand this One thing. This is the path of Advaita Vedanta. Om Shanti.

Makes sense, nothing can come out of nothing. For an effect to happen, there must be a cause; for something to come out, there has to be something in the first place. Everything has a beginning and end, for an object to have a beginning, there has to be something preceding that object to give birth to that object.

Agreed.

In that very same logic, where did the creators come from? Creators couldn't have originated from nothing. For creator to have come to the existence, there has to be creators of the creator. God I of God II. Now, where did God I come from? And don't tell me they were always there. So you make a mandatory rule and find exception for your God?

@ Kiddo.....Before asking question about creation and creators, please try to understand the cause and effect relationship. Realization is a step-wise process. Do you really understand what cause and effect are? If not, moving to questions like creation and creators can be hazardous. Here is an example that is useful for understanding the cause and effect relationship: You went to a jewelery shop to buy a wonderful set of jewelery for your gf or wife. When you went inside the shop, the shop-keeper started showing you a wide varieties of jewelery and you were perplexed which one to buy. Then you called your gf/wife for suggestions. You gf/wife advised you to buy a gold necklace, a gold bracelet, a pair of gold jhumkas for ear, and a gold Amkharaa for doing daily puja path. Have you ever questioned yourself that, are these varieties real? Is gold Jhumkas different from gold Amkharaa? What is the essence of gold Jhumkas and gold Amkharaa? Do these Jhumkas and Amkhara exist independent of gold? If you truly investigate the essence of Jhumkas and Amkharaas, you will find that there is nothing but gold in all these jewelries. Now the question arise, are these sound called Jumkas, Necklace, bracelet etc really do exist apart from gold? Now, what is the cause here, and what is the effect here? Are they same? Or are they different? Try finding answers to this questions before moving into the business of creation and creators.

Like they say, sunnay bata sabai create bhako ho. So, the God has been created from nothing.
So, what is this nothing? This nothing is the Mother Nature. Similarly, the concept of black hole is the same. May be we should start praying black hole. LOL

Try finding answers to this questions before moving into the business of creation and creators.
I asked you a question but you presented lot more questions to me. Why? Is your definition of God that complicated that a commoner like me cannot understand its meaning without going too deep into the meaning of existence and getting confused in the meaning of cause-and-effect. Anything that complicated sounds made up to me.

Fine, let's go your route. Let's answer your questions.

Necklace, bracelet etc really do exist apart from gold?
Let's start with gold, made up of element Aurum (Au), has 79 Protons/Electrons and 118 neutrons. You separate one proton from each atom of Aurum and you don't have gold. So, hope we established the definition of gold.

Now, you get a good quantify of this material called gold, melt it and make an artistic figure out of it. Now you can call it necklace or bracelet. It still is gold, but now it can be classified also as a necklace/bracelet. Do they exist apart from Gold? You can have necklace made of non-gold material (say silver for example); but if you are asking this particular necklace, then the necklace is just another name given to that piece of gold now and in all essence it still is the same gold, made up of the element aurum, which was made up of even smaller particles.

Can anything come out of nothing ? Cause and effect ? Can being come out of Non-Being?
Interesting questions !
Lawrence M. Krauss, in his book "A Universe from Nothing" has made an attempt to explain these questions - not so much religiously/philosophically but scientifically. Good read !
There's also a short youtube video explaining the same.

ujl, good reading but you appear over smart to say "Hope you realize this One thing which is indescribable, which senses cannot perceive, which is beyond scientific investigation, which is beyond mind and intellect. However, there is a way to understand this One thing. This is the path of Advaita Vedanta. Om Shanti."

What exactly you mean scientific investigation? Why scientific investigation cannot be turned inward to explore the mind itself?

"Can anything come out of nothing? " . Depends how you define anything and nothing. Is energy something or nothing? Does something imply something our senses can grasp? Is vacuum something or nothing?

@ Kiddo....By asking questions, I can fathom where you are at. The state of confusion is always higher than the state of ignorance. The moment you are confused, you try to seek true knowledge. Now, I have another question for you: When you touch that necklace made up of gold, what do you touch? Do you touch gold or do you touch necklace?

@ paradox....I am not even talking about MIND. Yes, scientific investigation works fine if you want to investigate mind, this is pure psychology and psychology is science. But, here I am not talking about mind. I am talking about That from which mind evolved. Mind + Senses + Intellect = Scientific Investigation. If you say, the sky is blue, can I trust you?

@ujl
Let me also ask you a question. When you asked "when you touch that necklace..." what did you mean? The gold or the necklace. Whatever you meant is what I meant.

ujl you are one confused soul

Although you have a lot to say, you cannot say anything with clarity because you are trying to explain the unknown by the known.

Please do not pretend to understand the unknown. It is okay to not understand the unknown.

@ funtush... I am not trying to prove anything here. This thread is an open discussion for whoever interested in understanding the cause and effect relation.

@ Kiddo...You cannot manipulate my question and ask the same question to me ! Again, this is an open discussion here. I want to know what other people think about cause and effect.

Ujl this is an open discussion that is why your writings is open for interpretation. And my interpretation from your postings is that you are pretending to understand the unknown :)

Hmm..so it is fair when You ask a question to my question; but I am not allowed to ask you a question to your question. Great logic. Btw, you still haven't answered my original question.

My last question was a genuine one, I need to understand which object you are referring to before I tell you about that object. Seemed fair to me.

Ok, fine, let's play by your rules.

I touched the necklace which was an identifier for the specially designed/crafted lump of gold that it was made from.

Well said funtush.

"Please do not pretend to understand the unknown. It is okay to not understand the unknown."

Ujl,

Do you have a guru? If so, can we know who s/he is?

@ Power... I do have many gurus. Gurus are not just persons but can be anything that eliminates the ignorance within you and liberates you. Hope this answers your question.

@ Kiddo... So, if I remove the gold from your necklace, where will your necklace be?

@ Funtush... You are free to interpret whatever you want.

I am very much wondering what would be Ujl's answers to Kiddo. After, may be 20 iterations of questions-answers, he will probably say this: "You are confused. when you say "I touched the necklace which was an identifier for the specially designed/crafted lump of gold that it was made from.", I can clearly see you are clinging around the necklace. This is a clear lack of consciousness, which makes you think about necklace rather than the substances on it. To understand why you fail to see it, you will need to answer this question:.....etc" :)

Ujl,

Can you list some of your top gurus? Maybe we can learn from them too.

If you remove just a small piece of gold, the necklace will still be there, albeit deformed.

Now, pardon me if I ask you the question since you seem to just want to go linear in your Q/As (I have these sets of questions that I expect these sets of answers to; any divergence from that would not be tolerated, seem to be your mantra). When you say you take away gold FROM the necklace, how? How are you taking gold away from the necklace? If you can answer this, I can give you the answer.

Now I know you will try to avoid answering that question. I will give you one way of doing so. Through electroplating, you can first cover this necklace with, say copper or similar metal. Then through electrolysis, you can extract all the gold from this necklace and deposit that in an anode. There you go, you now still have a necklace but no gold in it.

@ Kiddo... There is another problem here! Now, you don't have the gold necklace anymore which I am interested in. The substance which was gold now has turned into something else through your electroplating thing. The substance is still there in other form but where is your gold necklace?
Are you getting the relationship here between the gold and the gold necklace? The moment you removed gold from the gold necklace, there is no more gold necklace there. There is some other necklace which I have no knowledge of since I don't know what the new material is. Now, reverse the process of electroplating thing on new material and bring it back to gold. Aha, there is gold necklace again ! Necklace is merely a sound which do not have corresponding reality because the gold necklace cannot exist independent of gold but gold can become many gold necklaces. Even you did electroplating thing, the substance was there but the gold necklace was not there. In summary, the 3 laws of causation are:

1) An effect can never be without a cause. ( Gold necklace cannot be without the Gold).

2) Effects are cause itself in different forms ( Gold necklace, Gold bracelets, Gold Jhumkas etc. are different forms of Gold itself. In all these jewelries, there is nothing but Gold. Gold has assume many shapes and mind has given different names for practical purpose of differentiation)

3) From the effects if the cause is removed, nothing remains. ( For example, remove gold from the gold necklace, there will be nothing. Note: removing here means annihilating completely, not just mere transforming into another material)