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184 Saiva Philosophy in some Important Texts [CH. same lines as was done by Rāmānuja in the introductory portion of his bhāsya on the Brahma-sūtra, and these have been fairly elaborately dealt with in the third volume of the present work.
To declare Brahman as differenceless and then to attempt to describe its characteristics, saying, for example, that the world comes into being from it and is ultimately dissolved in it, would be meaningless. According to the opponents, all that which is regarded as existent would be false, which under the supposition would be inadmissible. If the world as such is false, then it is meaningless to ascribe to it any pragmatic value.
The question may be raised, whether the Brahman is knowledge or absence of knowledge. In the first case it will be difficult for the opponent to describe the nature of the content of this knowledge. The other question is, whether the opponent is prepared to regard the distinction between the false objects (the appearance of the world) and the Brahman as real or not. If the distinction is real, then the theory of monism fails. There is no way of escape by affirming that both the ideas of difference and identity are false, for there is no alternative. Moreover, if Brahman was of the nature of knowledge, then we should be able to know the content of such knowledge, and this would be contradictory to the idea of Brahman as differenceless. There cannot be knowledge without a content; if there is a content, that content is as external as Brahman Himself, which means that the manifold world of appearance before us is as external as Brahman. There cannot be any knowledge without a definite content. Moreover, if the world appearance is regarded as having a pragmatic value, the real value must be in that something which is the ground of the appearance of the manifold world. In such a case that ground reality would be a rival to the Brahman and would challenge His oneness. In this way, Srīpati refutes the interpretation of Sankara that the Brahman is differenceless and that the world-appearance is false. He also asserts that human beings are inferior to God's reality, and can have a glimpse of Him through His grace and by adoring Him.
The central idea of the Vira-saiva philosophy as propounded by Śrīpati is that God is indistinguishable from His energies, just as the sun cannot be distinguished from the rays of the sun. In the original state, when there was no world, God alone existed, and all the manifold world of matter and life existed in Him in a subtle
