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Rāmānujadāsa alias Mahācārya 365 as knowledge can remove not only ignorance but also the real fact of bondage. Emancipation may thus be regarded as the eternal manifestation of bliss and it is not indispensably necessary that all manifestation of bliss or happiness must be associated with a body like other ordinary bodily pleasurel
The Sankarites say that since the unchangeable self cannot be the material cause of the world phenomena nor anything else, it comes by implication that there must be an ajñāna stuff which is the material cause of the world, for it is only such a material cause that can explain the ajñāna characteristics of the world-phenomena. Brahman has often been designated as the material cause of the world, and this is true only so far as it is the basic cause (adhisthānakāraņa), the pure being that underlies all phenomena. The ajñāna is the changing material cause (pariņāmi-kāraņa), and as such the world participates in the nature of ajñāna in its characters.
To this Mahācārya's reply is that even though the worldcreation may be supposed to be false, that does not necessarily imply the assumption of a positive ajñāna. Thus the illusory silver is produced without any cause, or the self may be regarded as the material cause of the world-creation, which though partless may appear as the world through error. It cannot be said that a false effect must have a false entity as its cause, for no such generalization can be made. The presence of the common characteristic of falsehood cannot determine the supposition that a false entity must necessarily be the cause of a false effect, for there must be other common characteristics in other respects too and there is certainly no absolute similarity of characteristics between the cause and the effect?. Moreover, an effect does not necessarily possess the same identity of existence as its changing material cause; it is therefore not impossible for the Brahman to be the material cause of the world, though its purity may not be found in the world. If the Brahman is regarded as the pariņāmi-kārana of the world, it cannot of course have the same identical existence as the world, but if an entity can show itself in another form we may call it a pariņāmi-kāraṇa, and it is not necessary for it to have the same existence as that effect. Thus, destruction and the cessation of avidyā are both regarded as
Sad-ridyā-vijaya, pp. 39–75 (MSS.). 2 nanu upādāno-pādeyayoh sālakṣanya-niyama-darśanād eva tat-siddhir iti cet sarvathā sālakṣanyasya mrd-ghatayoḥ apy adarśanīt yat kiñcit sārūpyasya śuktirajata-dāv api padārthatva-dinā satvät. Ibid. p. 77.
