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And as this Pradhana is at the same time eternal, as far as its essential nature is concerned, and the substrate of all change, there is nothing contradictory in the different accounts of creation calling it sometimes 'Being' and sometimes 'Non-being'; while, on the other hand, these terms cannot, without contradiction, both be applied to Brahman.
Nor must you raise the objection that it is hard to understand how that which is capable of being apprehended by itself can be a mere mode of something else: for that the body's essential nature actually consists in being a mere mode of the Self is proved just as in the case of class characteristics and so on by its having the Self only for its substrate and final cause, and standing to it in the relation of a distinguishing attribute.
But the pranas cannot move without a substrate, and hence we must admit that the rudiments of the elements which are their substrate are also moving. But the text, 'when the speech of the dead person enters into fire, &c. Up. Hence the text which asserts the latter point must be explained in some other way! Not so, the Sutra replies.
Nor, in the second place, is the gold coin originative of the svastika-ornament; for we do not perceive the coin in the svastika, as we do perceive the threads in the cloth. Nor, in the third place, is the effect originated by the gold in so far as being the substrate of the coin; for the gold in so far as forming the substrate of the coin is not perceived in the svastika.
Reason therefore leads us to assume a common substrate of all things that are subject to change. This is primary matter, free from all form. This matter being at the basis of all change and becoming, could not itself have come to be through a similar process, or we should require another matter prior to it, and it would not be the prime matter we supposed it to be.
That the knowledge of the knowing subject may extend beyond its substrate, as the light of a luminous body does, we have already explained under the first Sutra. But it has been said that the Self is mere knowledge; how then can knowledge be said to be a quality which is something different from the essential nature of a thing? This the next Sutra explains.
This too we refuse to admit; for you yourself have proved that Brahman, which is pure Consciousness, is free from attributes which are objects of Consciousness. From all this it follows that Brahman, whose essential nature is knowledge, cannot be the substrate of Nescience: the theory, in fact, involves a flat contradiction.
This again is no way conceivable, but by assuming as a postulate, that both are ab initio, identical and coinherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally each other's substrate.
For just as in the case of the snake-rope we observe that the continuously existing rope only which forms the substrate of the imagined snake is real, while the snake or cleft in the ground, which is non-continuous, is unreal; so we conclude that it is the permanently enduring clay-material only which is real, while the non-continuous effects, such as jars and pots, are unreal.
On the one side there is Brahman's absolute perfection and antagonism to all evil; on the other it is the substrate of Nescience, and thereby the substrate of a false appearance which is involved in endless pain; for to be connected with evil means to be the substrate of Nescience and the appearance of suffering which is produced thereby.
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