Vedantists admit that the Atman or God is not only the efficient cause of this universe, but also the material cause. But they only say so in so many words. They do not really mean it,for they try to escape from their conclusions, in this way: They say there are three existences in this universe -- god, soul, and nature. Nature and soul are, as it were, the body of God, and in this sense it may be said that God and the whole universe are one. But this nature and all these various souls remain different from each other through all eternity. Only at the beginning of a cycle do they become manifest; and when the cycle ends, they become fine, and remain in a fine state.



The Advaita Vedantists -- the non - dualists -- reject this theory of the soul, and, having nearly the whole range of the Upanishads in their favour, build their philosophy entirely upon them. All the books contained in the Upanishads have one subject, one task before them -- to prove the following theme: "Just as by the knowledge of one lump of clay we have the knowledge of all the clay in the universe,so what is that, knowing which we know everything in the universe?" The idea of the Advaitists is to generalise the whole universe into one -- that something which is really the whole of this universe. And they claim that this whole universe is one, that it is one Being manifesting itself in all these various forms. They admit that what the Sankhya calls nature exists, but say that nature is God.

It is this Being, the Sat, which has become converted into all this -- the universe, man, soul, and everything that exists. Mind and Mahat are but the manifestations of that one Sat. But then the difficulty arises that this would be pantheism. How came that Sat which is unchangeable, as they admit (for that which is absolute is unchangeable), to be changed into that which is changeable, and perishable? The Advaitists here have a theory hich they call Vivarta Vada or apparent manifestation.

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