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16 The Bhāgavata-purāņa
(CH. and drc 3 would be destructible. To avoid this criticism they held that God's forms, abode, etc., were constituted of non-spatial and non-temporal elements of His non-material essential power. But forms involve spatial notions, and non-spatial forms would mean non-spatial space. They had practically no reply to such criticism, and the only way in which they sought to avoid it was by asserting that the essential nature of God's powers were unthinkable (acintya) by us, and that the nature of God's forms which were the manifestations of this essential power could not therefore be criticized by us on logical grounds, but must be accepted as true on the authoritative evidence of the Purūnas.
This notion of the supra-logical, incomprehensible or unthinkable (acintya) is freely used in this school to explain all difficult situations in its creeds, dogmas, and doctrines. Acintya is that which is to be unavoidably accepted for explaining facts, but which cannot stand the scrutiny of logic (tarkāsaham yaj-jñānam kāryānyathānupapatti-pramānakam), and which can account for all happenings that may be deemed incomprehensible or impossible (durghața-ghatakatvam). How the formless Brahman may be associated with the three powers by which it can stay unchanged in itself and yet create the world by its external power of māyā or uphold the individual souls by its other power is a problem which it is attempted to explain by this concept of incomprehensibility (acintya)". The māyā which is the manifestation of the external power of God is defined in the Bhāgavata as that which cannot manifest itself except through the ultimate reality, and which yet does not appear in it, i.e. māyā is that which has no existence without Brahman and which, nevertheless, has no existence in Brahman. This māyā has two functions, viz. that with which it blinds the individual souls, called jīva-māyā, and the other by which the world transformations take place, called the guņa-māyā.
Jiva Gosvāmi argues in his Sarva-samvādinī, which is a sort of a running commentary on Tattva-sandarbha, that the followers of Sankara consider ultimate reality to be pure consciousness, one and
1 In the Visnu-purāna these three powers are called parā, aridyā-karmasamjñā and kşetrajñākhya. This parā māyā or the searūpa-sakti is also sometimes called yoga-māyā.
te'rtham yat pratiyeta na pratiyeta catmani tad vidyād ātmano māram yathābhāso yathā tamaḥ.
Bhagavata, i1. 9. 33.
scaled yoga-mo prevention atma
