Brahman is the only being which contains the elements of cit and a-cit which are transformed into the forms of individual souls and material objects.
The Ṛta (order) that makes Prakrti appear to be composed of sub-systems arranged hierarchically with each sub-system being progressively inclusive, co-ordinating and interdependent is traditionally held to be the main basis of the doctrine of pre-existent effect or Sat-Karya-vada or the doctrine of real transformation or Parinama-vada, which R.A.Sinari states is “the earliest and epistemologically the most valuable attempt made in Indian philosophy to set up a theory of causal order”.
But, both the Samkhya School and the Brahma Sutras base their understandings of the process of transformation for origination of things on the will of the creator.
According to the Srividya and the Saivite texts, the thirty-six tattvas covering the entire range of the un-manifest and manifest world, from the gross to the most subtle known as siva, pure illumination.
The followers of Advaita School promoted by Adi Sankara, to whom owing to Maya the world appears as if it is real i.e. distortion or false apprehension of the all encompassing unity of Brahman, use this term ‘vivarta’ to support the principle of the immutability of reality.
[8] Vidyaranya reminds us – एकमेवाद्वितीयं सन्नामरूपविवर्जितम् | - that before the creation there existed the Reality, one only, without a second, and without name and form (Panchadasi 5.5), this after explaining (in verse 2.59) that with Brahman as its basis, Maya creates the various objects of the world, just as a variety of pictures are drawn on a wall by the use of different colours, in other words, “Maya makes it possible for the imagination to attribute different changes to the unchangeable”.
Madhava rejects Bhaskara on the ground that it is not possible for Brahman to transform at the loss of original nature, and there cannot exist unbridgeable gulf between Cit (Spirit) and Jada (Matter).239 A perfect being of pure intelligence and bliss cannot evolve out of itself an effect that is inert and wholly lacking in intelligence.
Ramanuja accepts the material causality of Brahman which is absolutely without personal modification and which has the transforming Prakrti as its body.