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 antaryamin; the fundamental text for this special Ramanuja tenet—­which in the writings of the sect is quoted again and again—­is the so-called antaryamin brahma/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 (prakara).  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 (kara/n/avastha).  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 to an end, creation takes place owing to an act of volition on the Lord’s part.  Primary unevolved matter then passes over into its other condition; it becomes gross and thus acquires all those sensible attributes, visibility, tangibility, and so on, which are known from ordinary experience.  At the same time the souls enter into connexion with material bodies corresponding to the degree of merit or demerit acquired by them in previous forms of existence; their intelligence at the same time undergoes a certain expansion (vika/s/a).  The Lord, together with matter in its gross state and the ‘expanded’ souls, is Brahman in the condition of an effect (karyavastha).  Cause and effect are thus at the bottom the same; for the effect is nothing but the cause which has undergone a certain change (pari/n/ama).  Hence the cause being known, the effect is known likewise.