Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s19.8.4

v2.c26.s19.8.4

Love lives in the life of its objects, exhibiting the sorrow though not the guilt of wrong-doing and sin and the joy of righteous living. For Śaṁkara, as for many other philosophers, a self-conscious being which has no object, which does not possess its opposite and does not affirm its unity in terms of it, is impossible. It is through its manifestations or objects that a self-conscious personality lives, moves and has its being. Yet it is necessary to hold that it is in no way affected by the changes of its object, a thesis which it is difficult to maintain. The events of nature and the change of souls bring about alterations in the nature of Īśvara. The Vedāntaparibhāṣā openly admits that the activities of living beings produce various modifications of māyā or prakṛti, which is the upādhi or the body of Īśvara.¹ The appearance and disappearance of the world shows that the Divine nature undergoes change, contraction and expansion. So long as creation and destruction are real movements in the life of God, the latter is not above time but is subject to time; so that, even as creation and destruction belong to the empirical world, Īśvara belongs to it.