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168 Saiva Philosophy in some Important Texts [CH. work. Next from the māyā comes avyakta, the guna-tattva, and from the guna-tattva, the buddhi-tattva, from that, ahankāra, from that manas, buddhi, the five conative and five cognitive senses, the five tanmātras and the five gross objects.
As we have hinted above, most of the Siddhānta schools of thought are committed to the view that the material cause is different from the instrumental cause. This material cause appears in diverse forms as māyā, prakyti or the atoms and their products, and the instrumental cause is God, Siva. But somehow or other most of these schools accept the view that Siva, consisting of omniscience and omnipotence, is the source of all energy. If that were so, all the energy of the māyā and its products should belong to Siva, and the acceptance of a material cause different from the instrumental becomes an unnecessary contradiction. Various Siddhānta schools have shifted their ground in various ways, as is evident from our study of the systems, in order to get rid of contradiction, but apparently without success. When the Naiyāyika says that the material cause, the relations, and the instrumental cause are different, and that God as the instrumental cause fashions this world, and is the moral governor of the world in accordance with karma, there is no contradiction. God Himself is like any other soul, only different from them in the fact that He eternally possesses omniscience and omnipotence, has no body and no organs. Everything is perceived by Him directly. Again, if one takes the yoga point of view, one finds that Iśvara is different from praksti or the material cause, and it is not His energy that permeates through prakyti. He has an eternal will, so that the obstructions in the way of the developing of energy of prakyti in diverse channels, in accordance with karma, may be removed to justify the order of evolution and all the laws of nature as we find them. The Isvara or God is like any other puruşa, only it had never the afflictions with which the ordinary puruşas are associated, and it has no karma and no past impressions of karma. Such a view also saves the system from contradiction, but it seems difficult to say anything which can justify the position of the Siddhānta schools wavering between theism and pantheism or monism. In the case of the Sankara Vedānta, Brahman also is real and he alone is the material and instrumental cause. The world appearance is only an appearance, and it has no reality apart from it. It is a sort of illusion
