/lit/ - Literature

>>12398711
>There must be a first cause, if the regression of causality went on infinitely backwards, then the world would only exist in its potentiality, there would be no us. But we do exist, therefore we know that the universe as we know it at some point began, and that first cause is God

God is pure conciousness and is the only thing that exists, the universe subjectively experienced by living beings is unreal. Presupposing that consciousness is not eternal and emerged from something else leads to an infinite regress which either can be solved only by that first thing emerging from nothing (impossible) or from an eternal first cause. But something that is eternal cannot contradict it's own inherent nature and become non-eternal, hence nothing can ever emerge from it and there is only It, or in other words if you accept that there is any reality at all to anything it leads to an eternal first cause which is inseparable from itself. Consciousness is the same as that eternal first cause because the act of witnessing or consciously being aware of something which is the only thing that actually exists necessarily makes you one with it. See Gauḍapāda's Māṇḍukya Kārikā:

http://merki.lv/vedas/Upanishadas/Mandukya%20karika%20of%20Gaupada%20_eng_.pdf