The Ikṣati section turns to a major philosophical dispute with the Sankhya school. The question is whether the First Cause spoken of in the Upanishads is the insentient Pradhana of Sankhya, or the conscious Brahman of Vedanta. The sutras decisively establish that the cause must be Brahman because the scriptures describe the First Reality as thinking, willing, and consciously projecting the universe.
Statements such as “It thought, may I become many” become central to the argument. Thought, intention, and self-expression cannot belong to an unconscious principle. The very act of willing creation points to an intelligent cause. For Vedanta, this means the Sat spoken of in the Chandogya and other Upanishads can only be Brahman, never the inert Pradhana.
The Sankhyas attempt to reply that such “thinking” language may be figurative, just as fire and water are poetically described as thinking in certain passages. But the text goes further and identifies this same Sat as the Self, entering beings as the living principle and becoming the ground of names and forms. This cannot apply to an unconscious material principle, since the scriptures are clearly speaking of the inner conscious Self.
The force of the section deepens when liberation is declared for one devoted to this Sat. An insentient cause cannot be the object of liberating knowledge. The teaching “Thou art That” addressed to Svetaketu makes sense only if the ultimate principle is conscious and identical with the deepest self of the knower.
Further, the Upanishads never instruct the seeker to later abandon this Sat as an incomplete stage. Instead, the whole teaching consistently unfolds it as the true Self. This continuity becomes one of the strongest arguments against identifying it with the Sankhya Pradhana.
The sutras also draw from the experience of deep sleep, where the individual soul is said to merge into its own Self. Such merging into pure being is intelligible only if the ground is consciousness itself. The inert Pradhana cannot serve as the destination of the conscious self.
Finally, the section appeals to the harmony of all Vedantic revelation. Across the Upanishads, the First Cause is uniformly presented as omniscient, self-luminous, and sovereign. The total movement of scripture converges on Brahman as the intelligent source of the universe. Ikṣati therefore becomes a decisive defence of conscious reality as the foundation of all existence.
Original Text