History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

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25
XXXIV]
Siva-jñāna-bodha The instrumental agent is one. The individual souls being bound by bondage or pāśa cannot be regarded as being identical with the ultimate agent or Brahman.
The deeds of a person do not automatically produce effects. The effects are associated with the person in accordance with the will of God. The deeds themselves are inanimate and they cannot therefore produce effects spontaneously. All effectuation is due to God, though it does not imply any change of state in the nature of God. An analogy is taken to illustrate how changes can be produced without any effort or change in the changeless. Thus the sun shines far away in the sky and yet without any interference on its part, the lotus blooms in the lake on the earth. So God rests in His self-shiningness, and the changes in the world are produced apparently in a spontaneous manner. God lives and moves in and through all beings. It is only in this sense that the world is one with God and dependent on Him.
The very denial of the different assertions that the self is this or that proves the existence of the self through our self-consciousness. We thereby assume the existence of an unconditioned self, because such a self cannot be particularised. It is easily seen that such a self is not the same as any of the visible organs or internal organs or the manas.
The self is different from the inner organs, the mind and the senses; but yet they can be taken as forming a joint view of reality, as in the case of the sea. The waves and billows and the foam and the wind form one whole, though in reality they are different from one another. The malas which are supposed to be mainly embedded in the māyā, naturally stick to our bodies which are the products of māyā, and being there they pollute the right perspective as well as the right vision of all things. The commentator, whose name is untraceable, adduces the example of the magnet and iron filings to explain the action of God on the world without undergoing any change. It is the power of Siva working in and through us by which we can act or reap the fruits of our action according to our deeds.
Siva is to be known through inference as the cause which is neither visible nor invisible. His existence thus can only be known by inference. The acit or unconscious material passes before Siva, but does not affect it, so that Siva is quite unconscious of the world-appearance. It is only the jīvas that can know both the