Adi-tila, Chapter 6 525

understanding, however, one accepts the Supreme Absolute Person, the Personality
of Godhead, as the cause of all causes, who is full with diverse energies and who is
neither impersonal nor void. The impersonal manifestation of the Supreme Person
is another display of His energy. Therefore the conclusion that matter is the original
cause of creation is completely different from the real truth. The material manifes-
tation is caused by the glance of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is incon-
ceivably potent. Material nature is electrified by the supreme authority, and the
conditioned soul, within the limits of time and space, is trapped by awe of the
material manifestation. In other words, the Supreme Personality of Godhead is
actually realized in the vision of a material philosopher and scientist through the
manifestations of His material energy. For one who does not understand the power
of the Supreme Personality of Godhead or His diverse energies because of not
knowing the relationship between the source of the energies and the energies them-
selves, there is always a chance of error, which is known as vivarta. As long as
materialistic scientists and philosophers do not come to the right conclusion,
certainly they will hover above the material field, bereft of proper understanding
of the Absolute Truth.

The great Vaisnava philosopher Srila Baladeva Vidyabhisana has very nicely ex-
plained the materialistic conclusion in his Govinda-bhdsya on the Veddnta-siitra. He
writes as follows:

“The Sankhya philosopher Kapila has connected the different elementary truths
according to his own opinion. Material nature, according to him, consists of the
equilibrium of the three material qualities, goodness, passion and ignorance. Material
nature produced the material energy, known as mahat, and mahat produced the
false ego. The ego produced the five objects of sense perception, which produced
the ten senses (five for acquiring knowledge and five for working), the mind and the
five gross elements. Counting the purusa, or the enjoyer, with these twenty-four
elements, there are twenty-five different truths. The nonmanifested stage of these
twenty-five elementary truths is called prakrti, or material nature. The qualities of
material nature can associate in three different stages, namely as the cause of happi-
ness, the cause of distress and the cause of illusion. The quality of goodness is the
cause of material happiness, the quality of passion is the cause of material distress,
and the quality of ignorance is the cause of illusion. Our material experience lies
within the boundaries of these three manifestations of happiness, distress and illusion.
For example, a beautiful woman is certainly a cause of material happiness for one
who possesses her as a wife, but the same beautiful woman is a cause of distress toa
man whom she rejects or who is the cause of her anger, and if she leaves a man she
becomes the cause of illusion.

“The two kinds of senses are the ten external senses and the one internal sense,
the mind. Thus there are eleven senses. According to Kapila, material nature is eter-
nal and all-powerful. Originally there is no spirit, and matter has no cause. Matter
itself is the chief cause of everything. It is the all-pervading cause of all causes. The
Sankhya philosophy regards the total energy (mahat-tattva), the false ego and the
five objects of sense perception as the seven diverse manifestations of material
nature, which has two features, known as the material cause and efficient cause. The
