God, according to Dayanand, is without form. He can't be with form because if we assume him to be so he would be limited, without power, defined by country and time, and subject to hunger, thirst, being cut and pierced, cold, heat, pain and so forth. Without the spirit, God-like qualities can never dwell in him. As neither do human beings have bodies that they cannot have control over prakriti and minor atoms of infinitesimal size, nor can they catch hold of those subtle things and make them gross; so too, a gross form-endowed God cannot make the gross world from subtle elements.

But being subtler than prakriti and pervading it, he can by controlling prakriti, create the universe, and be the dweller in all and the destroyer too. Without cause there cannot be effect. God too cannot create or make anything unless he sees existence of a cause. Dayanand's view is different from that of the Advaita Vedanta. According to Shankaracharya it is Brahman which is the cause of the universe. Dayanand's argument is that Brahman cannot be the material cause, because while it is non-material the universe consists of matter. The nature of the two is different, so one cannot be the cause of the other.

The Vedanta says it can. As for example, worms in insentient putrefying matter like cow-dung. We evil are of themselves produced in wood and grain, insects and worms in fruit which rot. At the same time nails and hair growing in the body are lifeless. Vedanta believes cause and effect to be one. The earthen pot is in essence clay, even after it is made. The effect is not different from the cause. So there does not exist the world (effect) different from Brahman (cause). As we have discussed before, Dayanand's argument in favour of his view that God cannot be the material cause of the universe, is also that if this were so, at the time of dissolution (pralaya) the world of effects would dissolve back into Brahman, the cause. The impurities of the worldly state might then also make the causal state of brahmahood impure. The Vedanta's answer to this is that it is not necessarily so. For example, when gold or silver articles are melted, the resultant god or silver does not become impure. When the magical creations of a magician are no more, they cannot affect him.

Another Vedantic concept, which Dayanand refutes, is that only Brahman is true and the world is false (Brahman satya, jagat mithya). He says 'If every substance's immutability is eternal how can it be non-eternal'. To this the objector says 'The immutability of all things is also transient. As fire burns up firewood and then is consumed [dies out]'. To this Dayananad's answer is: 'That which appears as it is, can never be said to be transient in the present and so too its greatly subtle cause cannot be said to be transient. If the Vedantists consider Brahman to be true, the world, which proceeds from it, cannot be false. Even if dreams are said to be imaginary like the "snake-in-the-rope" and so forth, that cannot stand scrutiny, because imagination is a quality; and substance and quality can never remain separate from each other. If we believe the one who imagines to be eternal, what he imagines must also be eternal; otherwise you have to consider the one who imagines to be transient also. In other words either the imaginer and what he imagines must both be eternal or both transitory. One can't be eternal and the other transitory..

As dreams never come without the dreamer seeing and experiencing them, those objects, which exist in waking, are seen and their knowledge established in the soul. These are then seen again in dreams. As even in deep sleep when a person is unaware of anything, the objects of the waking world are still there, so also in dissolution (pralaya) cause-matter [seed of cause] remains existent. If dreams are not caused by mental impressions, then even a man blind by birth would be able to see forms. So in dreams we have only mental impressions, while in the waking world the objects exist in their reality.'

Dayanand goes on to say that it can never be conceded that the waking world does not exist in deep sleep or dreams. When a person is soundly asleep or dreaming he may not see the objects around him, but that does not mean they have no existence. Its, as a person is looking in front of himself cannot know what things are there behind him. So it must be acknowledged that the cause of Brahman, the soul and the world are beginingless and eternal.

By saying this, however, Dayanand was not contradicting the Vedanta stand in its entirety. The illusioriness of the world was certainly a Vedanta concept. The Vedanta said in general that what is real is present at all times. It ever was, and ever will be. The world of experience is not present at all times, and therefore unreal. Only Brahman is real. The Brihadaranyaka Upanisha says that as the notes of a drum, a conch-shell or a lute have no existence in themselves, and can only be received when the instrument that produces them is struck, he who knows the atman knows so all objects and relations of the universe. Nevertheless it must not be supposed that Dayanand's view can count to the Vedantic concept in its entirety.

In some schools of Shankar Vedanta everything is held to be illusion. Objects are said to exist only when they are perceived, and dissolve into nothingness when they are not perceived. This is the drishti-sroti school, which perhaps takes its inspiration from the yoga Vasistha. The world of waking is akin to dreams and is mere awareness without any right, as of itself, to existence. (Vijnana-matra or bhava-matra). According to Gaudapada, the guru of Shankara's guru, the world is a dream, and existence is unreal. There is no production, destruction, no one is fettered, on one liberated. All that one sees, feels, or experiences is mere imagination.

As Tulsidasa says in the Ramayana 'dekhiye, suniye, guniye mana mamhi, moha mula paramaratha nahim' ['Whatever one sees, hears or imagines in the mind is illusion, and has no reality']. Appearances are only relatively produced, not in reality. They are like dreams, which come and go. In the beginning Shankara, too, was inclined to this view. But the Buddhist idealists like Vasubandhu, made him revise his vies. Between his commentary on the Karika and that on the Brahma Sutras, there was a visible change. If there is nothing outside the mind, he wrote, how could objects exist as they do? It was wrong to say that the appearance of worldly objects in wakefulness is like dreams. Dreams are contradicted on waking, experiences are not contradicted. It is only one's views about the world, which change. When one is bound to the world, he is lost in sense pleasures, and when he is not so bound he achieves liberation. The world is there, it is not non-existent like the horns of a hare. The real error is in taking the transitory to be eternal, the painful as the pleasure giving, the unholy as the holy and the body as the soul. As soon as this error is removed, one sees truth as it really is (yathartha). Thus Dayanand's view in this respect may be contrary to certain schools of the Vedanta, but not contrary to Shankaracharya's philosophy.