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XXII] Brahman and the World
455 indistinguishable from it?. The idea involved in avibhāga or oneness with the cause is not regarded as an ordinary relation of identity but as a sort of non-relational relation or a situation of uniqueness which cannot be decomposed into its constituents so that a relational bond may be affirmed of them. The upshot of the whole position is that the nature of the universe is so founded in Brahman which forms its ground that it cannot be regarded as a mere illusory appearance of it or as a modification or a product of it; but while these two possible ways of relation between the cause and the effect fail, the universe as such has no existence, significance or meaning without the ground in which it is sustained and which helps its evolutionary process. The ordinary relation of the sustainer and the sustained is inadequate here, for it implies a duality of independent existence; in the present case, however, where Brahman is regarded as the ground cause there is no such duality and the universe cannot be conceived as apart from Brahman which forms its ground and essence while remaining unchanged in its transcendent reality. Thus, though it may have to be acknowledged that there is a relation between the two, the relation has to be conceived as the transcendental one, of which no analogy is found els where. The seeming pictorial analogy which falls far short of the situation is to be found in the case where water is mixed with milk 2. Here the existence of the water is dependent upon the existence of the milk so long as the two exist in a mixed condition; and neither of them can be conceived without the other. The nature of the prakrti and the puruşa is also manifested from the essence of God's nature as pure consciousness. The causality of substance, qualities and actions is also due to the underlying essence of God which permeates all things. The difference between the relation of samavāya and this unique relation of indistinguishableness in the ground is that while the former applies to the case of the intimate relation of the effects in and through themselves, the latter refers only to the special fact of the indistinguishable character of the effect in the cause, and has no reference to the relation of the effectparts among themselves with reference to the whole as an inseparable concatenation of eífects. The ordinary organic relation such
1 Käryä-vibhäga-dhāratvasyai' vo' pādāna-sāmünya-laksanatvät. Vijñānāmrta-bhāsya, I. 1. 2.
avibhāgas că' dhāratāvat svarūpa-sambandha-viseso' tyanta-sammisranarüpo dugdha-jalādy-ekatā-pratyaya-niyāmakaḥ. Ibid.
