Sarvadarshanasangraha 16.3

16.3

As for the example stated by the opponent, that milk and the like, though insentient, act solely without being governed by a conscious being for the growth of the calf, this is not pleasing. For the Supreme Lord, who is endowed with particular intelligence, is accepted to be the governor even there. Nor, if one accepts that the Supreme Lord acts out of compassion, is there room for the previously mentioned dilemma. For even though living beings have no relation to suffering prior to creation, an action with the desire to destroy it is reasonable, because they can have a relation to the unseen merit and demerit which is its root cause. Moreover, it was said that the activity of pradhāna is prompted by the aim of human existence; that must be examined. Does pradhāna act solely for the sake of experience, or solely for the sake of liberation, or else for the sake of both? The first alternative does not hold. For a puruṣa, who is devoid of any adventitious excellence and immutable-eternal, cannot have real experience; and it would result in non-liberation. For by whatever purpose pradhāna was set in motion, it must accomplish that; and since it was set in motion by experience, it would accomplish only that, not liberation. Nor the second. Since the conscious principle is eternally pure, enlightened, and liberated by nature, impressions of karmic experience are impossible for it, and so, because it is liberated even prior to the activity of pradhāna, activity for that purpose is illogical; and because pradhāna did not act for the sake of experiencing sound and the like, it would result in not producing that. Nor the third, because it is not immune to the aforesaid faults, and because indifference is impossible for nature whose very essence is activity.