Some terminological remarks

Before proceeding, some terminological clarification is in order. A mental property refers to any state of mind. This includes states such as belief, desire, and will, as well as conscious or experiential properties – ways of experiencing that are distinguished by what it is like to have them. A physical object is one that instantiates physical properties. The physical world, or simply the world, is the totality of physical objects. A concrete object is one that instantiates physical or mental properties. A subject is a concrete object that instantiates experiential properties.

Human beings and other living beings, such as higher animals (which instantiate both physical and mental properties) and rocks (which instantiate only physical properties) are all concrete objects. However, only human beings and higher animals qualify as subjects. To distinguish these from God – who is likewise a subject and will later be referred to as a cosmic subject – I refer to them as macro subjects.Footnote ²

I will refer to the key Vedāntic concept – commonly designated by terms such as ‘Brahman’, ‘Ātman’, and ‘Tattva’ (see below) – as ‘ultimate reality,’ by which I mean the one fundamental entity that metaphysically grounds all that exists while itself being ungrounded by anything. It is also important to note that the terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’, as used here, do not correspond to the Sanskrit term ‘manas’, which is traditionally translated as mind but functions differently within classical Indian philosophical frameworks.

Metaphysical grounding will be central to what follows, and the exact sense in which I employ the notion will become clearer in due course. For now, it suffices to say that I take grounding to be a non-causal relation of ontological priority among concrete objects, one that supports a metaphysical foundationalist picture: every concrete object is either fundamental or fully grounded in one or more fundamental concrete objects. In addition, I assume that grounding backs ‘in virtue of’ explanations: if X is grounded in Y, then X exists, and is the way it is, in virtue of Y, and facts about X obtain in virtue of facts about Y.Footnote ³

Jīva Gosvāmī’s notion of ultimate reality

There are several aspects that distinguish Jīva’s Bhedābheda Vedānta from other Bhedābheda schools. Central to his ontology is a verse from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (1.2.11), which states:Footnote ⁴

In an important respect, Jīva Gosvāmī treats this verse as expressing a foundational scriptural thesis that discloses the nature of ultimate reality and functions as a hermeneutical constraint on the interpretation of the Upaniṣads and other Purāṇas.

Following the terminology of this verse – and departing from standard Vedāntic usage – Jīva refers to ultimate reality as Tattva (literally, ‘that-ness’) rather than Brahman. In his framework, Brahman – together with Paramātman and Bhagavān – denotes one of the three aspects of ultimate reality, with the distinctions among these three being primarily epistemic and conceptual rather than ontological.Footnote ⁵ They represent varying ways in which Tattva may manifest or be experienced, rather than referring to separate realities. As the verse states, all three terms describe the one non-dual ultimate reality. Because of this, Jīva often uses the three terms – ‘Brahman’, ‘Paramātman’, and ‘Bhagavān’ – interchangeably, each designating the same Tattva or ultimate reality, a convention I will occasionally adopt here as well.

Bhagavān (literally, ‘the one who possesses [all] excellences, or perfections’) is the complete and fullest manifestation of ultimate reality. In him, all kinds of śakti – divine powers, glories, perfections, and attributes – are fully manifest. Depending on the extent to which these śaktis Footnote ⁶ are non-manifest, ultimate reality is known as either Brahman or Paramātman. When the varieties of śakti are completely, or almost completely, unmanifest, ultimate reality is referred to as Brahman: a formless, undifferentiated, and impersonal non-dual consciousness. Brahman is Bhagavān, but with the splendour and glory unmanifest. When the śaktis becomes partially manifest, particularly in relation to the world, ultimate reality is known as Paramātman: the inner controller (antaryāmin) of all individual beings, the support and the efficient cause of the world, and the guiding force behind the world’s functioning.

This account entails a hierarchy among the different manifestations of ultimate reality: Bhagavān is at the top, Brahman is at the bottom, and Paramātman occupies the middle. As a result, Bhagavān, as the full manifestation of ultimate reality, is the real foundation of Jīva’s ontology. In alignment with Madhva and other Bhedābheda thinkers, Jīva emphasises the personal nature of ultimate reality, such that his concept of ultimate reality is, ultimately, a theistic conception of God. In its fullest manifestation, ultimate reality is a divine subject – and hence a concrete object – who, from a first-person perspective, instantiates not only experiential properties but also other mental properties, such as thought, belief, and volition.Footnote ⁷

But the connection between Tattva and consciousness runs deeper than what its association with the concept of Bhagavān alone might suggest. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa verse defines ultimate reality as non-dual consciousness (jñānam advayam). For Jīva, ultimate reality itself is consciousness. Although the term used in the verse is ‘jñāna’ – typically translated as knowledge or cognition – Jīva emphatically glosses it as consisting of (undivided) consciousness (jñānaṁ cid-eka-rūpam, literally, ‘jñāna [is] one-form consciousness’).Footnote ⁸

Thus, for Jīva, in relation to ultimate reality, consciousness is both attributive – by virtue of the characterisation of Bhagavān, and indeed of Brahman and Paramātman as well – and substantive, in light of his definition of Tattva. Beyond acknowledging that the substantive dimension is present, I will not attempt to clarify what it means to say that Tattva is consciousness. My focus here will fall primarily on the attributive aspect.

In this regard, as a methodological assumption, I will take Jīva’s use of the terms ‘jñāna’ in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa verse and ‘cit’ to correspond – at least approximately – to consciousness in the experiential sense of ‘what-it-is-like-ness’. This is supported, for example, by Jīva’s claim that Tattva is of the nature of supreme bliss (parama-sukha), which plausibly implies an experiential dimension.Footnote ⁹ Thus, in my reconstruction, ultimate reality or Tattva instantiates conscious or experiential properties.

Śakti and the relationship between ultimate reality, the world, and macro subjects

A central element of Jīva’s concept of ultimate reality is the notion of śakti.Footnote ¹⁰ In its fullest manifested form as Bhagavān, ultimate reality possesses several śaktis, being therefore known as śaktimān, the possessor of [all] śaktis. The term ‘śakti’ has been translated into English in numerous ways, including power, capacity, energy, and potency. In the context of Jīva and other theologians of his school, the term covers a large range of things, including Bhagavān’s divine attributes and realm, macro subjects, and the world with its manifold physical objects.Footnote ¹¹ All these are ultimate reality’s śaktis. Indeed, with the sole exception of ultimate reality itself, everything – especially every concrete object – is either a śakti of ultimate reality or constituted by such śaktis.

Ultimate reality’s śakti is divided into three categories. First, the internal (antaraṅga or svarūpa) śakti, which includes Bhagavān’s attributes and the realm in which He resides and carries out His divine activities (līlā). Second, the in-between (taṭastha) śakti, which consists of the souls, or individual selves (ātman or jīva) who may inhabit this world. Third, the external (bahiraṅga) śakti – also known as māyā-śakti – which comprises the non-conscious principle (pradhāna) that transforms into the world and its manifold physical objects.

Given that souls are inherently conscious, I will, for the purposes of this paper, treat the term ‘taṭastha-śakti’ as at least coextensive with the term ‘macro subject’, using them interchangeably.Footnote ¹² Also, since the world, as defined in the section ‘Some terminological remarks’, also includes macro subjects who instantiate physical properties (that is, embodied souls), it arises from a combination of both the external śakti and the in-between śakti – something that Jīva explicitly acknowledges.Footnote ¹³ In other words, the world is constituted by these two śaktis of ultimate reality. I will therefore often refer to these two kinds of śakti – and their products, a distinction I will sometimes overlook – collectively as ‘macro subjects and the world’.

Jīva offers an analogy to clarify his threefold division of śakti.Footnote ¹⁴ The sun gives rise to (1) the fiery radiance within its orb, (2) the rays that extend outward from it, and (3) the sun’s reflection on the surface of a pond, for example. In this analogy, the sun represents Bhagavān, while (1) corresponds to the internal śakti, (2) to the in-between śakti, and (3) to the external śakti. A key point in the analogy is that, while (1)–(3) all proceed from and ontologically depend on the sun, their relationship to it varies in terms of proximity and connection.

It is precisely through this gradation of proximity that Jīva addresses the classical problem of imperfection within Vedānta: if the world is a transformation (pariṇāma) of ultimate reality, then the world’s imperfections, ignorance, and evils must ultimately be traced back to ultimate reality. While acknowledging that the world is indeed a transformation of ultimate reality in its manifestation as Paramātman, Jīva maintains that this transformation does not affect its inner nature – corresponding, in the analogy, to the sun and the radiance within its orb – which remains unchanged. The transformation occurs only indirectly, through Paramātman’s inconceivable (acintya) śakti, primarily in the form of the external śakti, but also involving the in-between śakti.Footnote ¹⁵ This ensures that Paramātman remains ‘pure’ and untouched by the imperfections of the world. For this reason, Jīva’s doctrine of creation is often described as Śaktipariṇāmavāda (Gupta Reference Gupta2007, 205).

Despite this, all three kinds of śakti are characterised by an ontological continuity extending from ultimate reality to themselves – a relation that underpins Jīva’s Bhedābheda doctrine. As the analogy goes, just as there is both difference and non-difference between the sun, its orb, its rays, and even its reflection on the surface of a pond, so too ultimate reality and its śaktis are simultaneously different and non-different from one another.

The emphasis on non-difference arises from the fact that śakti is intrinsic to ultimate reality’s very nature. Just as light is inseparable from fire – naturally arising from it and sharing its nature – so too the śaktis of ultimate reality are intrinsic to its very being (svabhāva-bhūta) and non-different or inseparable from its essential nature (svarūpād abhinna).Footnote ¹⁶ In fact, speaking specifically of the in-between and external śaktis, Jīva Gosvāmī says that although ultimate reality is not tainted by them, they are nevertheless its śaktis precisely because they possess the condition of being eternally dependent upon it – nitya-tad-āśritatā, literally ‘the condition of eternally being situated upon, resting in, or dwelling within that (i.e., ultimate reality)’ – and because they have no independent existence apart from it.Footnote ¹⁷ In more strictly philosophical terms, the śaktis – as well as their products – are grounded in ultimate reality.Footnote ¹⁸

Since everything – apart from ultimate reality itself – is a either a śakti of ultimate reality or constituted by such śaktis, it follows that Jīva’s use of the term ‘Tattva’ satisfies the definition of ultimate reality given in the section ‘Some terminological remarks’ as the single fundamental reality, the one concrete object in which all other existing entities are grounded.

Discussing this grounding relation between ultimate reality and its śaktis, Aleksandar Uskokov (Reference Uskokov2024, 16–17) notes an important connection between Jīva’s thought and Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta:

This is important because it reminds us that, in accordance with the traditional sense of the term ‘śakti’, Jīva’s three kinds of śakti – in particular the in-between and the external śaktis – are attributes or properties of Bhagavān. In fact, speaking specifically about maya-śakti, Jīva says that it is a particular property (dharma-viśeṣa) of Bhagavān.Footnote ²⁰ At the very least, this entails that Bhagavān is ontologically prior to His śaktis, such that they are grounded in Him and rest upon Him as their locus.

But as Uskokov (Reference Uskokov2024, 16) aptly notes, Bhagavān’s various śaktis ‘encompass and give rise to whatever may be called a “thing” in the most general sense and in any domain of existence’. In particular, the external śakti – and the entities that arise from it – and the several tokens of the in-between śakti ‘are ontological reals, substances, in their own right, but are treated as attributive to the first principle [Tattva]’ (Uskokov Reference Uskokov2024, 16).

In other words, macro subjects and the world with its manifold physical objects possess a dual nature. In themselves, they are substances; in relation to ultimate reality, they function like properties. Like properties, macro subjects and the world are ‘possessed’ by ultimate reality and rest upon it as their locus. Yet in themselves, they resemble substances: they bear properties, are ontologically individuated, and persist through time. As Uskokov (Reference Uskokov2024, 17) observes, ‘it is their being simultaneously a substance and an attribute or a property that is the distinctive feature of [Jīva’s] ontology of śakti’.

One might question the tenability of the thesis that an entity can be both a property and a substance at the same time. Uskokov (Reference Uskokov2024, 16–17) remarks that

A perhaps more effective response would begin by clarifying, in philosophical terms, what is meant by ‘property’ and ‘substance’ within Jīva’s ontological framework.

First of all, in several strands of Indian philosophy, a viśeṣaṇa – and, in a closely related sense, a prakāra (usually translated as predicate, attribute, or mode) – is not ontologically restricted to the status of a non-substantial property. Rather, a viśeṣaṇa or prakāra can itself possess a degree of substantiality while remaining dependent upon that which it qualifies or of which it is a mode. This helps explain how śaktis can be understood as properties of ultimate reality without thereby denying them some robust ontological status.

Second, against this background, macro subjects and the world should not be understood as properties of ultimate reality in the sense of universals, but rather as closer to tropes – that is, token or particularised qualities (for example, the specific redness of an apple, rather than the universal property of redness).Footnote ²¹ This finds some support in Jīva’s already mentioned statement that Bhagavān’s śakti is a dharma-viśeṣa, literally a particular (viśeṣa) property (dharma). So understood, this does not commit one to a bundle theory on which objects are nothing more than collections of tropes.

This point is important, since Jīva operates within a substance-based metaphysical framework. In such a framework, tropes exist only in virtue of the substances that bear them; they are grounded in those substances and, in a crucial sense, are nothing over and above them. This view is consistent with – and in some respects entailed by – Jīva’s ontology, according to which the śaktis of ultimate reality are inseparable from it and intrinsic to its very nature. Thus, the śaktis of ultimate reality – and in particular macro subjects – are, in a sense to be clarified below, nothing over and above ultimate reality itself.

Accordingly – and this is the third point – ‘substance’ should not be understood here in the traditional Aristotelian sense, as that which exists in itself and serves as the ultimate bearer of properties. In this strict sense, ultimate reality alone qualifies as a substance. Instead, macro subjects and the world, together with their manifold physical objects, may be called substances only in a relative, Cartesian sense: although grounded in ultimate reality, śaktis – such as macro subjects and (at least some) physical objects – remain ungrounded with respect to one another.Footnote ²²

Priority monism

As a Bhedābheda account of ultimate reality, Jīva’s ontology is monistic in that it presupposes a fundamentally unitary principle. Throughout the Sandarbhas, he repeatedly characterises ultimate reality as advaya, that is, non-dual. Yet there are several forms of monism. There is substance monism, which holds that there is only one kind of substance, or one highest ontological category under which all concrete objects fall; physicalism, understood as the view that everything is physical, is a familiar example. There is existence monism, which maintains that exactly one concrete object (token) exists; Advaita Vedānta is sometimes interpreted as approximating this view, insofar as it holds that Brahman alone is ultimately real. And there is priority monism, which is the type of monism into which Jīva’s Bhedābheda Vedānta fits.Footnote ²³

In its short formulation, priority monism holds that there is exactly one fundamental concrete object, or one concrete object in which all other existing objects are grounded. In its fuller form, it maintains that the Cosmos – understood as the totality of reality, or the single maximal actual concrete whole of which all actual concrete objects are parts – is this one fundamental object, ontologically prior to its proper parts, even though those parts exist as objects in their own right. While everything is grounded in the Cosmos, the Cosmos itself stands ungrounded.Footnote ²⁴

This doctrine rests on three main assumptions and yields one main consequence. The first assumption is that there is a Cosmos that has a multitude of proper parts. The second is that the Cosmos is not identical with any plurality of its many proper parts. The third is the priority of the whole, the thesis that the whole is ontologically prior to its proper parts. The consequence is that all facts about the Cosmos’s proper parts – whether physical or mental – obtain in virtue of facts about the Cosmos as a whole.

There are two important points to be stressed in this definition of priority monism. First, following Chalmers (Reference Chalmers and Seager2020, 353), I include mentality within the scope of concreteness, while excluding abstract domains such as mathematics. Second, whereas proper parthood is typically construed in terms of spatial inclusion, I adopt a broader interpretation. This is less about disagreement and more about emphasising what is crucial to understanding priority monism. On my view, the central significance of priority monism’s concept of proper parthood lies in ontological priority and grounding.

According to priority monism, proper parthood and grounding are extensionally equivalent: a concrete object X is a proper part of the Cosmos if and only if X is grounded in the Cosmos. I take this equivalence as the basis for a minimal definition of proper parthood within priority monism: for any two concrete objects X and Y, X is a proper part of Y if and only if X is grounded in Y, being nothing over and above Y. From this it follows that the Cosmos can be defined as the single maximal concrete object in which all other concrete objects – apart from the Cosmos itself – are metaphysically grounded.Footnote ²⁵

Returning to Jīva’s ontology, it is clear that it satisfies the short formulation of priority monism. For Jīva, ultimate reality is the sole fundamental concrete object – the one entity in which all other existing objects are grounded. But his ontology also meets the full formulation. Since all concrete objects – including macro subjects and the world with its manifold physical objects – are either śaktis of ultimate reality or constituted by such śaktis, and thus grounded in it, it follows, by the foregoing definition, that ultimate reality is identical with the Cosmos. At first glance, this may seem odd – after all, according to a common understanding of the term, only the pantheist identifies God with the Cosmos.

Yet, when the Cosmos is understood as the whole of reality, as we have done here, this identification accords with both Vedānta broadly and Jīva’s Bhedābheda Vedānta in particular. Jīva explicitly characterises Bhagavān as the undivided, all-encompassing reality (akhaṇḍa-tattva).Footnote ²⁶ He also repeatedly invokes the declaration of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad that ‘All this is indeed ultimate reality’ (sarvaṁ khalv idaṁ brahma).

As a consequence, all concrete objects can, from the perspective of priority monism, be regarded as proper parts of ultimate reality. In this regard, it is significant that the term ‘aṁśa’ – meaning portion or part – is frequently used in connection with the in-between śakti, which Jīva repeatedly identifies as parts (aṁśa) of Bhagavān. In fact, Jīva states that macro subjects possess the condition of being parts (aṁśatvam) of Bhagavān precisely because they are His śaktis.Footnote ²⁷ This, of course, is not unique to Jīva. As Andrew Nicholson (Reference Nicholson2007, 374) puts it, Bhedābheda theorists in general were under pressure to put the case for ‘the theory of the real transformation (pariṇāma) of Brahman and the understanding of the relation between the soul and Brahman as one of part and whole’.Footnote ²⁸

Thus, Jīva’s Bhedābheda Vedānta fulfils the full formulation of priority monism: ultimate reality – identifiable with the Cosmos, the one maximal concrete whole – is the single fundamental concrete object, ontologically prior to its proper parts, even though those parts exist as objects in their own right. Beyond satisfying the priority of the whole, Jīva’s ontology also meets the other two assumptions of priority monism. As a realist form of Vedānta, it affirms both the reality of the Cosmos and its parts, and it holds that the Cosmos is not identical with any plurality of its many proper parts. The straightforward conclusion, then, is that Jīva’s Bhedābheda Vedānta entails a form of priority monism that, lacking a better label, I will call śakti-based Vedānta priority monism – or SV priority monism, for short.

Beyond this broader conception of proper parthood and the Cosmos, SV priority monism differs from Schaffer’s in one key respect. In Schaffer’s account, the Cosmos is roughly identified with what I am calling the physical world, the totality of physical objects. By contrast, SV priority monism conceives the Cosmos as a divine, maximal subject, within which the physical world is but one proper part.

Having established that Jīva’s Bhedābheda Vedānta entails a form of priority monism, I now turn to cosmopsychism.

Priority cosmopsychism

From a minimal standpoint, cosmopsychism is the thesis that the Cosmos instantiates experiential properties.Footnote ²⁹ When combined with priority monism, this yields priority cosmopsychism: the view that the Cosmos possesses a form of consciousness that grounds not only the macro consciousness of human beings and other animals, but everything else. Accordingly, every fact – whether physical or mental – is grounded in consciousness-involving facts about the Cosmos.Footnote ³⁰

As we have seen, SV priority monism conceives of the Cosmos as a divine, maximal subject that instantiates not only experiential properties but also other mental properties such as thought, belief, and volition. The clear implication is that SV priority monism entails – and indeed constitutes – a form of priority cosmopsychism that, for lack of a better term, I will call śakti-based Vedānta cosmopsychism – or SV cosmopsychism, for short.

An important point of contention concerns the precise nature of the priority relation between the Cosmos and its parts. Within cosmopsychism, this relation might be understood in at least two ways: emergentist or grounding (Chalmers Reference Chalmers and Seager2020, 363–364). I follow Philip Goff (Reference Goff2017, Reference Goff and Seager2020) and Schaffer (Reference Schaffer, Chalmers, Manley and Wasserman2009, Reference Schaffer2010) in taking the defining feature of a grounding priority relation – echoing Armstrong’s (Reference Armstrong1997, 12–13) famous notion of an ‘ontological free lunch’ – to consist in the posterior entity X’s being nothing over and above the ontologically prior entity Y. If X is nothing over and above Y, then X contributes nothing beyond what is already present in Y; its existence introduces no new, independent ontological commitment, but is wholly grounded in Y without remainder.Footnote ³¹

If Y is ontologically prior to X in a grounding way, then X is nothing over and above Y. Y does not give rise to X; rather, X is grounded in Y, such that facts about X obtain in virtue of facts about Y: all facts about X are fully grounded in or determined by facts about Y. By contrast, if Y is ontologically prior to X in an emergentist way, then Y gives rise to X. In this case, X is something ontologically new – not merely a part or aspect of what is already present – but an entity over and above Y, such that facts about X are not fully grounded in facts about Y.

As suggested by what has been said so far, priority monism – and, by extension, priority cosmopsychism – is conceived in terms of a grounding relation. I will follow Goff (Reference Goff2017, Reference Goff and Seager2020) and refer to this kind of priority relation as grounding by subsumption. Goff (Reference Goff2017, 221) illustrates the concept with the example of a subject’s current experiential state, which encompasses, for example, visual, auditory, and emotional experiences. While one might regard the total experience as a mere bundle of these small experiences, it can instead be understood as a fundamental whole of which the visual experience of colours, the auditory experience of sounds, and so forth, are parts or aspects – subsumed within the subject’s total experience. In this sense, although these experiences may be seen as distinct ‘entities’, they are nothing over and above the total experience.Footnote ³²

While I acknowledge that an emergentist interpretation is also possible, I want to argue here for a grounding reconstruction of Jīva’s ontology. In other words, what I am calling SV cosmopsychism posits a grounding relation between the Cosmos – or ultimate reality – and its parts, such that the latter are subsumed within the former.

As we have seen, the śaktis of ultimate reality are inherent or intrinsic to its very nature (svabhāva-bhūta), being non-different, or inseparable, from its own essence (svarūpād abhinna), eternally dependent upon it (nitya-tad-āśritatā), and possessing no independent existence apart from it. In this regard, Ravi Gupta (Reference Gupta2007, 40), reflecting on the analogy of fire and its light, remarks:

This suggests that ultimate reality’s śaktis and their products – most notably macro subjects and the world – are grounded in ultimate reality itself, being nothing over and above it. This, in turn, reinforces the idea that they are its parts.

The emphasis on the unity of ultimate reality, as highlighted by Gupta, is crucial, for an emergentist interpretation would appear to conflict with the monistic dimension of Jīva’s ontology. If we suppose that ultimate reality is ontologically prior to both the external and in-between śakti in the sense of giving rise to them, then the multiplicity of macro subjects, and the world with its manifold physical objects, would constitute genuinely new entities over and above ultimate reality. It is difficult to see in what sense such a picture could still be considered monist. Moreover, the naturalness and inseparability of śakti from ultimate reality would have to be reinterpreted in an attenuated sense that risks trivialising these notions. Finally, an emergentist reading would also undermine the claim that śakti is eternally situated upon ultimate reality (nitya-tad-āśritatā), since emergence necessarily entails a moment of origination in time.

The idea that the śaktis are subsumed within ultimate reality itself, being nothing over and above it, is also supported by the view of śaktis as trope-like properties mentioned earlier. This point can be further elaborated through another example Goff gives to illustrate grounding by subsumption, namely the relation between an object and its properties. Instead of assuming that at the fundamental level there are objects and properties somehow ‘glued together’, one might follow Armstrong (Reference Armstrong1997) and claim that what we find are

In a similar vein, ultimate reality together with all its śaktis constitutes a fundamental unity – a kind of cosmic trope-propertied subject. Accordingly, all of ultimate reality’s śaktis – and their products – which function as trope-like properties, are subsumed within ultimate reality itself, being nothing over and above it.

From this clarification, it should now be evident that ultimate reality not only can but must be identified with the Cosmos – understood as the totality of reality, the single maximal actual concrete whole of which all actual concrete objects are parts. Since everything apart from ultimate reality is either its śakti or constituted by such śaktis, and these śaktis are nothing over and above ultimate reality, it follows that ultimate reality is everything: the totality of all that exists.

It is important to remember that in priority cosmopsychism, and consequently in SV cosmopsychism, every fact – whether physical or mental – is grounded in consciousness-involving facts about the Cosmos, rather than in any other kind of fact about it. It is the consciousness of the Cosmos, and none of its other aspects, that is fundamental.Footnote ³³ On this reading, the conscious or experiential properties of ultimate reality may be said to ground all other kinds of properties – whether physical or mental – instantiated by its parts.

Within my reconstruction of Jīva’s ontology, this claim may be contested. Some within Jīva’s broader tradition might argue instead that it is the spiritual nature of Bhagavān – whatever precisely that means – that sustains all of reality, rather than its consciousness. I do not intend here to engage in such theological or exegetical disputes. My more limited claim is that, once it is granted that the ontological relation between ultimate reality and its parts is one of grounding, it is at least reasonable, within Jīva’s thought, to maintain that consciousness-involving facts about ultimate reality ground all other kinds of facts. Supporting this is a point already noted: for Jīva, in relation to ultimate reality, consciousness is not merely attributive but also substantive. As we have seen, a consequence of his interpretation of Bhāgavata Purāṇa 1.2.11 – which serves as the cornerstone of his ontology – is that ultimate reality is nothing other than consciousness.

To conclude this section, I note that SV priority cosmopsychism also entails a form of panentheism, broadly understood as the thesis that (i) the universe – which, according to the terminology employed here, includes the world and macro subjects – is in God, while (ii) God is more than the universe. More specifically, it aligns quite closely with what Thomas Oberle (Reference Oberle2025) calls grounding panentheism, that is, the view that God’s existence grounds the existence of the universe. Drawing on the Bhagavad-gītā, Oberle proposes three desiderata for a minimal account of the God-world relation in panentheism: it must be asymmetric, quasi-mereological, and generative or ontologically productive – conditions that, according to him, are satisfied by the grounding relation. On this interpretation, (i) – that is, the ‘in’ of panentheism – is understood in terms of grounding, while (ii) is secured by these three conditions.

Some philosophical implications

I now offer some reflections on the implications of SV cosmopsychism, considering both its advantages and potential objections.

The first advantage of SV cosmopsychism – indeed, one of the virtues ascribed to priority cosmopsychism in general – is that it avoids the explanatory gap problem, which concerns how macro-level subjective experience could arise from anything other than experience itself without an inexplicable leap. After all, the experiential properties of subjects are grounded in properties of the same kind at the fundamental, cosmic level.

However, SV cosmopsychism remains vulnerable to a version of the explanatory gap problem – namely, the well-known individuation problem, also referred to as the decomposition, derivation, or decombination problem – which is often regarded as the central challenge to priority cosmopsychism.Footnote ³⁴ One might ask, for example: if macro subjects are subsumed within ultimate reality – which is Bhagavān, a cosmic subject – how are we to account for their subjective individuality, their distinct first-person perspectives, and the structured character of their qualitative experiences?

A roughly inverse concern – one that arises specifically for theistic forms of priority cosmopsychism such as SV cosmopsychism – is as follows: if the mental states of individual subjects are nothing over and above aspects of the cosmic consciousness, then such states are, at best, shared with Bhagavān, and at worst, not genuinely their own at all but solely Bhagavān’s. This would imply, for instance, that Bhagavān is the bearer of flawed and ethically questionable decisions, and possesses mental states such as envy, hatred, and the desire to harm others – all of which are incompatible with the nature of a perfect divine being. This issue is closely related to the Vedāntic problem of imperfection discussed earlier. In the absence of a better term, I will refer to it as the cosmopsychist Vedāntic problem of imperfection.Footnote ³⁵

The second advantage of SV cosmopsychism – once again shared with priority cosmopsychism in general – is its capacity to address the causal exclusion problem, namely, the question of how consciousness can exert causal efficacy in a world in which, according to many philosophers, every physical event possesses a sufficient physical cause, thus entailing the causal closure of the physical domain. SV cosmopsychism’s approach to the causal exclusion problem, however, is subtle and nuanced (see below).

The third advantage of SV cosmopsychism is that, unlike most forms of cosmopsychism – which usually refrain from attributing thought and agency to the Cosmos (Goff et al. Reference Goff, Seager, Allen-Hermanson and Zalta2022) – it avoids what Chalmers (Reference Chalmers and Seager2020, 368) terms the austerity problem: how rich and structured individual experiences could arise from an unstructured, minimal cosmic consciousness lacking rationality, thought, or agency. This problem simply does not arise in SV cosmopsychism – and in most forms of theistic cosmopsychism (Silvestre Reference Silvestre2024, 466–467) – since the Cosmos is conceived as possessing a richly structured mental life, at least as sophisticated as human consciousness.

In what follows, I will show how SV cosmopsychism addresses the individuation problem, the cosmopsychist Vedāntic problem of imperfection, and the causal exclusion problem. Doing so will require a progressive clarification of the grounding relation that both the physical world and macro subjects bear to the Cosmos, along with a more precise account of what these (external and in-between) powers (śaktis) of ultimate reality are.

The individuation problem

As we have seen, Jīva conceives of ultimate reality as heterogeneous. As the sun–sunray–reflection analogy suggests, in addition to ultimate reality being analysable into a substratum and its trope-like properties, or śaktis, these various kinds of śaktis can also be distinguished from one another. Moreover, owing to their dual nature, the several tokens of the in-between śakti corresponding to macro subjects, while remaining properties of the Cosmos and thus being nothing over and above it, can nonetheless be regarded as substances in a relative and minimal sense. All this entails some degree of ontological individuation.

To say that X is a substance is to say that X possesses its own particular haecceity, its unique ‘thisness’, which distinguishes it from everything else. In the case of conscious substances, this further implies a kind of subjective individuation – a first-person perspective uniquely tied to X. Not only are X’s experiential states accessible only from X’s own standpoint, but X is also such that there is something it is like to be X.

For this to be the case, there must exist some form of individuation or delimitation, allowing the śaktis to be distinguished from their substratum, even though the latter remains metaphysically grounded in the former – and also allowing each token in-between śakti, or particular macro subject, to be differentiated from the others. Such individuation is implicit in several analogies employed by Bhedābheda thinkers to describe ultimate reality – for instance, ultimate reality as a fire flickering in diverse individual forms, or an ocean tranquil at its depths while its surface is agitated into individual waves, bubbles, and foam. This suggests a distinctive kind of grounding relation characterised by a strong principle of individuation or individualising delimitation, which may reasonably be taken to resolve the individuation problem.

One might be tempted to align this with what Itay Shani (Reference Shani, Shani and Beiweis2023) calls generative monism, which in his view includes Kashmir Śaivism and Aurobindo’s Pūrṇa Vedānta, to which we may also add Swami Vivekananda’s Neo-Vedānta (Medhananda Reference Medhananda2022b, 299–371). This would be mistaken. In Shani’s generative monism, individuation results from ‘a process of internal differentiation through which a plurality of distinct entities arises out of an originary state of undifferentiated singleness’ (Shani Reference Shani, Shani and Beiweis2023, 55). Discussing Aurobindo in particular, Swami Medhananda (Reference Medhananda2022a, 99) describes this process as follows:

By contrast, in Jīva’s system, individuation is eternally given, not generated.

Similarly, SV cosmopsychism diverges from Goff’s (Reference Goff2024) recently proposed hybrid cosmopsychism, which holds that macro subjects emerge from the Cosmos through fundamental emergent laws, even though their experiential states remain grounded in cosmic experience. While both views accept that macro subjects are individuated and that their experiential states are grounded in cosmic experiential states, SV cosmopsychism rejects emergence: individuality is a brute fact, directly entailed by Jīva’s ontological commitments.Footnote ³⁶

The Vedāntic problem of imperfection

Be that as it may, this still leaves us with the cosmopsychist Vedāntic problem of imperfection. Even if we grant that each macro subject possesses a first-person perspective uniquely its own – one that secures the ownership of its mental states and experiences – those states nonetheless appear to be Bhagavān’s as well. After all, they are all subsumed within the cosmic consciousness. To address this, I must lean more on creative philosophical speculation and, as a critic might contend, move somewhat beyond what is articulated more explicitly in Jīva’s writings.

The experiential properties of macro subjects are grounded in the experiential properties of the Cosmos. Yet macro subjects themselves are properties of the Cosmos. The experiential properties of macro subjects, which are themselves properties of the Cosmos, are grounded in other properties of the Cosmos. How is this possible?

One way to make sense of this is to conceive of the in-between śakti as a kind of delimiting śakti – in the literal sense of a power or capacity – that selectively appropriates certain experiential properties of the Cosmos, or a specific ‘experiential space’ within the broader spectrum of the cosmic consciousness. In other words, a particular macro subject – a token of the in-between śakti – constitutes a unique first-person perspective endowed with the power to appropriate for itself a ‘experiential space’ within the cosmic consciousness. This appropriation is such that the macro subject enjoys exclusive first-person access to the experiential states within that space – access not shared by the Cosmos itself.

One might object that, even so, the Cosmos – albeit perhaps only in a weak or third-person sense – still possesses mental states such as envy and the like. In response, we can defend that the way the experiential states of macro subjects are grounded in aspects of the ‘pure’ and divine cosmic consciousness is that they are transformations (pariṇāma) of it. On this view, when an experiential property of the Cosmos is appropriated and apprehended by a macro subject X, it undergoes transformation. The underlying principle is that every first-person perspective imprints its own character upon what is experienced. Hence, although an experiential state may belong more broadly to the Cosmos, the fact that it is possessed and apprehended from X’s first-person perspective entails that its very qualitative nature is thereby altered and transformed.

This is consistent with the assumption that all of the Cosmos’s mental states are ‘pure’, in the sense of being free from any kind of imperfection. Only when such ‘pure’ and divine experiential states are appropriated and experienced by X from its unique first-person perspective do they become envy, hatred, and the like.Footnote ³⁷ Moreover, it is precisely the distinctive character of X’s first-person perspective that determines how these divine experiential properties are transformed. Similar experiential properties may be transformed into different mental states when appropriated by different subjects.

This reinforces the point that the experiential states of subjects are fully their own and not shared with the Cosmos. Consequently, ethically questionable or flawed decisions – as well as mental states such as envy, hatred, and the desire to cause harm – belong to macro subjects alone. In this way, the cosmopsychist Vedāntic problem of imperfection is resolved.

The causal exclusion problem

To address the causal exclusion problem, I propose a version of SV cosmopsychism inspired in Russellian monism – a view that holds, first, that physics describes only the causal, relational, and dispositional structure of physical properties, and second, that the intrinsic or categorical nature of these properties (about which, Russell argues, physics remains silent) is fundamentally experiential.

In Chalmers’s (Chalmers Reference Chalmers and Seager2020, 364) formulation of Russellian priority cosmopsychism, for example, the Cosmos instantiates fundamental physical properties – perhaps distributional properties concerning the distribution of matter in space-time, perhaps wave function properties, or perhaps something else – that are causally closed. These properties ground the physical properties instantiated by macroscopic objects and local physical systems, insofar as such properties correspond to localised or structured aspects of the Cosmos’s overall physical state. The Cosmos’s fundamental physical properties are, in turn, grounded in, or realised by, the Cosmos’s experiential properties, so that all physical properties ultimately depend upon experiential cosmic properties, which mirror their structure and enable their causal efficacy. Since macro conscious experiences are grounded in these same cosmic experiential properties and are nothing over and above them, they can be regarded as exerting causal influence on the physical world.

In the proposed Russellian version of SV cosmopsychism, the external śakti is conceived as associated with a specific experiential space within the broader spectrum of the cosmic consciousness. The distinctive feature of the experiential properties belonging in this space is that they possess a physical dimension: they ground the causal powers typically ascribed to physical properties – understood here in a Russellian manner as dispositional, relational, and causal – while mirroring their structural organisation. Thus, māyā-śakti, or the external power of ultimate reality, is the capacity that certain cosmic experiential properties have to exert causal influence: they ground or realise the causal powers that are unfused in the physical world, or infused into the substratum that transforms into the world.

Solving the causal exclusion problem within this framework requires three additional assumptions, each of which either follows from or is consistent with the ontology developed above, but merits brief clarification.

First, physical properties are causally closed. Note that this does not presuppose physicalism, since, within the present framework, physical properties are grounded in, or realised by, the Cosmos’s experiential properties. The claim of causal closure states only that physical effects are fully accounted for by physical causes at the physical level of description. Since physical properties are grounded in experiential cosmic properties, this closure does not exclude experiential causation. On the contrary, causal relations at the physical level are ultimately grounded in, and sustained by, causal relations within the experiential domain.

Second, the causal experiential space – that is, the region of experientiality within cosmic consciousness that grounds the causal powers attributed to physical properties – intersects the cosmic experiential subspace that tokens of the in-between śakti (macro subjects) appropriate for themselves. This assumption ensures that macro subjects are not causally isolated from the processes underlying their embodiment. Because macro subjects appropriate regions of the same experiential field that grounds physical causation, their experiential states participate in the very domain in which the causal powers of physical properties originate.

Third, some physical properties of a macro subject X’s body – namely, those corresponding to bodily movements under the control of X – are grounded in experiential cosmic properties belonging to this intersection. This assumption secures a particularly intimate grounding relation between macro subjects and their embodied physical structures. Since the cosmic experiential properties that ground some of X’s bodily physical properties belong to the experiential region appropriated by X, macro conscious states can legitimately be regarded as exerting causal influence over bodily and environmental physical processes. Note that such influence neither requires interaction between ontologically independent domains nor implies that every physical system corresponds to a macro subject. While all physical properties are grounded in cosmic experiential properties, only those grounded in the experiential region appropriated by X fall within X’s sphere of direct causal influence, namely, X’s body.

As a final note, I argue that this model preserves the gradation in ‘distance’ between the various kinds of śakti and Bhagavān. Since the external śakti is merely a dispositional aspect of experiential properties, whereas the in-between śakti is a delimiting power that demarcates and circumscribes a subspace within the experiential field of cosmic consciousness, we can say that the former stands at a greater distance from ultimate reality’s inner nature than the latter.