real constituents of Brahman's nature. Matter and souls (a/k/it and
/k/it) constitute, according to Râmânuja's terminology, the body of the
Lord; they stand to him in the same relation of entire dependence and
subserviency in which the matter forming an animal or vegetable body
stands to its soul or animating principle. The Lord pervades and rules
all things which exist--material or immaterial--as their antaryâmin; the
fundamental text for this special Râmânuja tenet--which in the writings
of the sect is quoted again and again--is the so-called antaryâmin
brâhma/n/a. (B/ri/. Up. III, 7) which says, that within all elements,
all sense organs, and, lastly, within all individual souls, there abides
an inward ruler whose body those elements, sense-organs, and individual
souls constitute.--Matter and souls as forming the body of the Lord are
also called modes of him (prakâra). They are to be looked upon as his
effects, but they have enjoyed the kind of individual existence which is
theirs from all eternity, and will never be entirely resolved into
Brahman. They, however, exist in two different, periodically
alternating, conditions. At some times they exist in a subtle state in
which they do not possess those qualities by which they are ordinarily
known, and there is then no distinction of individual name and form.
Matter in that state is unevolved (avyakta); the individual souls are
not joined to material bodies, and their intelligence is in a state of
contraction, non-manifestation (sa@nko/k/a). This is the pralaya state
which recurs at the end of each kalpa, and Brahman is then said to be in
its causal condition (kâra/n/âvasthâ). To that state all those
scriptural passages refer which speak of Brahman or the Self as being in
the beginning one only, without a second. Brahman then is indeed not
absolutely one, for it contains within itself matter and souls in a
germinal condition; but as in that condition they are so subtle as not
to allow of individual distinctions being made, they are not counted as
something second in addition to Brahman.--When the pralaya state comes