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472 The Philosophy of Vijñāna Bhiksu (CH. Bhāskara, Rāmānuja, Nimbārka and others. The general viewpoint of this bhedā-bheda philosophy is that it believes in the reality of the universe as well as in its spirituality, the distinctness of the individual souls as well as in their being centres of the manifestation of God, moral freedom and responsibility as well as a spiritual determinism, a personal God as well as an impersonal reality, the ultimate spirit in which matter and pre-matter are dissoved into spirituality, an immanent teleology pervading through matter and souls both in their origin and mutual intercourse as well as in the holiness of the divine will, omnipotence and omniscience, in the superior value of knowledge as well as of love, in the compulsoriness of moral and social duties as well as in their abnegation.
The ordinary classical Sāmkhya is well known to be atheistic and the problem arises as to how this may be reconciled with theism and the doctrine of incarnations. In interpreting sūtra 1. 1. 5, of the Brahma-sūtra, Bhikṣu says that since the scriptures say that "it perceived or desired,” Brahman must be a Person, for desire or perception cannot be attributed to the inanimate pre-matter (prakrti). Sankara, in interpreting this sūtra, asserts that the purport of the sūtra is that prakyti is not the cause of the world because the idea of a praksti or pradhāna is unvedic. Bhikṣu quotes a number of passages from the Upanisads to show that the idea of a prakrti is not unvedic. Prakrti is spoken of in the Upanisads as the cause of the world and as the energy of God. Prakrti is also spoken of as māyā in the Svetāśvatara, and God is spoken of as māvāvi or the magician who holds within Himself the magic power. The magician may withhold his magic, but the magic power lies all the same in him (māyāyā zyāpāra-nivịttir evā'vagamyate na nāśaḥ)". The ordinary prakrti is always undergoing change and transformation and it is only the special sattra-stuff associated with God that is always regarded as unchanging.
A question that may naturally arise in this connection is, if God is Himself unchangeable and if the sattva-body with which He is always associated is also always unchangeable, how is it that God can have a desire to produce the world at any particular time? The only explanation of this is that the attribution of will to God at a particular creative moment is only a loose usage of language. It
1 Vijñānā-myta-bhāşya, 1. 1. 5.
