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VEDANTA (4) ADVAITA that they become more numerous and clearer with the advance of knowledge and the growth of human institutions. When once the cosmic character of the world is admitted, we trace it back to a source which, though simple, accounts for all aspects of it. This source or the first cause is Māyā which symbolizes to us the unitary character of the physical world. Diversity is only implicit in it, while in the objective world that develops from it, it is quite explicit. There is, however, one important difference between May, and its products. The latter, as their very description as 'products' testifies, have all a beginning in time, but the former being the first cause can obviously have no such beginning. It also is therefore anādi like the jivas alluded to above. Jivas and Māyā thus form a new type of entities and differ from common objects which are all in time; but they are not, it should be added, altogether unrelated to time like Brahman or the ultimate reality.
It has been stated that the sphere of empirical objects is independent of individual consciousness. On the principle, however, to which we have already referred that whatever is, if not itself mind, must be for mind, it should depend upon some consciousness; for otherwise the statement that it is would be meaningless. Granting such an all-sustaining consciousness, it is easy to see what conditions it must satisfy. It should last as long as the world in its causal or effect form lasts. That is, it must be anādi. It cannot be any finite consciousness in the sense in which a jiva is, for it must know the contents of the entire universe. Not only this, whatever is known must also be correctly and directly known by it, for error and mediate knowledge which imply limitation of one kind or another are. by our hypothesis, excluded in the case of that consciousness. That is, its experience must be direct, complete and correct. This cosmic subject, as we may term it, to whom the whole of existence is related as an object, is the Isvara of Advaita and it is the third of the entities coeternal with time along with Māyā and the jīvas. Here we find the triple factor forming the subject-matter of all philosophy and religion. To them we may add a fourth, viz. time itself to which we have all along
