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xx] God in the Rāmānuja School
301 introduction of the relation of inseparable coherence (samavāya) in which the parts of a body are connected together in a way different from any other object. But it has already been pointed out that the samavāya relation is not admitted by the Rāmānujists.
Brahman may be regarded as the material cause of the world through its body as prakrti and the souls. Though a material cause, it is also the instrumental cause just as the individual souls are the efficient causes of their own experiences of pleasure and pain (through their own deeds), of which, since the latter inhere in the former, they may be regarded as their material causes. On the other hand, God in Himself, when looked at as apart from His body, may be regarded as unchangeable. Thus, from these two points of view God may be regarded as the material and efficient cause and may also be regarded as the unchanging cause.
Bhāskara and his followers hold that Brahman has two parts, a spirit part (cidamsa) and a material part (acidamsa), and that it transforms itself through its material part and undergoes the cycles of karma through the conditions of such material changes. Bhāskara thinks that the conditions are a part of Brahman and that even in the time of dissolution they remain in subtle form and that it is only in the emancipated stage that the conditions (upādhi), which could account for the limited appearance of Brahman as individual souls, are lost in Brahman. Venkața thinks that the explanation through the conception of upādhi is misleading. If the upādhi constitutes jīvas by mere conjunction, then since they are all conjoined with God, God Himself becomes limited. If the conception of upādhi be made on the analogy of space within a jug or a cup, where space remains continuous and it is by the movement of the conditioning jugs or cups that the space appears to be limited by them, then no question of bondage or emancipation can arise. The conception of upādhi cannot be also on the analogy of the container and the contained, as water in the jug, since Brahman being continuous and indivisible such a conception would be absurd. The upādhis themselves cannot be regarded as constitutive of individual souls, for they are material in their nature. Yādavaprakāśa holds that Brahınan is of the nature of pure universal being (sarvā-tmakam sad-rūpam brahma) endowed with three distinct powers as consciousness, matter and God, and through these powers it passes through the various phenomenal changes which are held up in it
