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182 Saiva Philosophy in some Important Texts [CH. so the Mīmāmsā contention that the description of Brahman must imply an imperative to action, and that the mere description of an existing entity is of no practical value, is false.
Śrīpati makes fresh efforts to refute the Mīmāmsā contention that the Vedas are not expected to give any instruction regarding a merely existing thing, for that has no practical value. Śrīpati says that a pure power of consciousness is hidden from us by avidyā. This avidyā is also a power of the nature of Brahman, and by the grace of Brahman this avidyā will vanish away into its cause. So the apparent duality of avidyā is false, and the instruction as regards the nature of Brahman has a real practical value in inducing us to seek the grace of God by which alone the bondage can be removed. The intuition of Brahman (brahma-sākṣātkāra) cannot be made merely by the study of the Upanişadic texts, but with the grace of God and the grace of one's preceptor.
Śrīpati says that the nitya and the naimittika karma are obligatory, only the kāmya karma, that is, those actions performed for the attainment of a purpose, should be divested of any notion of the fulfilment of desire. Only then, when one listens to the Vedāntic texts and surrenders oneself entirely to Siva, the heart becomes pure and the nature of Siva is realised.
Srīpati again returns to his charge against the doctrine of the falsity of the world. He says that since the Upanişadic texts declare that everything in the world is Brahman, the world is also Brahman and cannot be false. The entire field of bondage as we perceive it in the world before us would vanish when we know that we are one with Siva. For in that case the appearance of the world as diverse and as consisting of this or that would vanish, for everything we perceive is Siva. Brahman is thus both the substantial cause and the instrumental cause of the whole world, and there is nothing false anywhere. The world cannot be a mere illusion or mere nothing. It must have a substratum under it, and if the illusion is regarded as different from the substratum, one falls into the error of duality. If the so-called non-existence of the world merely meant that it was chimerical like the lotus in the sky, then anything could be regarded as the cause of the world underlying it.
It may be held that the Sankarites do not think that the world is absolutely false, but that its truth has only a pragmatic value
