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The Views Regarding God and the Doctrine of Brahman
Vijñānabhiksu too has written commentaries on Sankhya, Yoga as well as Vedanta texts. While commenting on Brahmasutra he too in his bhāṣya establishes the element Brahman in the form of God, but while doing so he has adopted a path altogether different from that of Bhaskara, Rāmānuja etc. Thus while establishing the element Brahman in the form of God he has made use of an argument employed by the Yoga tradition while establishing the concept of God and has submitted that with the help of pure prakṛti of the form of sattva-guna Brahman creates and develops the elements prakṛti and souls ever present within itself. Both prakrti and souls are real and also something different from Brahman, and yet they do not at all reside anywhere else except in their substratum of the form of Brahman. Consequently, even if something different from Brahman they are also something unseparated (avibhakta) from it, Besides, rejecting the current interpretation of God either as a material cause or as an efficient cause of the world he interpreted it as something of the form of a substratum and contended that a cause of the form a substratum is a fourth type of cause apart from the three well known type of it-viz. samavāyi-kāraṇa, asamavāyi-kāraṇa and nimitta kāraṇa. And a cause of the form of a substratum is that in which the effect concerned resides in an unseparated form and receiving enforcement from which it becomes capable of undertaking activity. Such a world-cause of the form of a substratum is Brahman and prakṛti as well as souls reside in it in an unseparated form. This is why Vijñānabhikṣu is called an advocate of the doctrine called Avibhāgadvaita (= nondualism-of-the-form-of-nonseparation). He opposes in an extremely violent fashion Sankara's doctrine of maya, and on the basis of Upanisads and so many Puranas and Smrtis establishing Brahman in the form of something nondual devoid of all separation calls it itself God. When calling Brahman itself God Vijnanabhikṣu comments on Brahmasutra then it becomes clear that the same argument which he in the course of writing his vārtika on Yogabhāṣya employs as regards the nature of God is employed by him at the time of propounding the nature of Brahman. That is why one can say that unlike Sankara, Vijñānabhikṣu does not regard the Yoga and Sankhya-Yoga traditions as un-Vedic, Nay, the latter goes to the extent of saying that prakrti posited by Sankhya is something in line with the teaching of Vedas. He also refers to the texts corroborating this statement and insists that prakrti is but a portion of Brahman. When Brahman has to function as God then that sattvaguna pure-since-a-beginningless-time which he bas to depend on is not something non-existent or ultimately unreal as is māyā And while commenting on Brahmasutra when there arises an occa. sion for refuting the Sankhya view he in a general manner simply says that the basic cause of the form of prakṛti cannot he demonstrated with
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