No it's not. The Sutra is saying that there is no cause for everything in existence. It is a misunderstanding of the sutra to think that it is saying that the jiva does not originate from the Lord, there is a big difference. The Lord does not create the jiva and nowhere in the Pancharatra or Bhagavata doctrine do we find different. But the Lord is the origin of the jiva because the Lord is the origin of everything. Swami Sivananda gives us three translations of Utpatti: causation, origination, creation. These 3 are not the same. If a drop of water in the ocean finds it's origin in the ocean that is different then saying the drop of water in the ocean was created or caused by the ocean. All jivas and everything in existence finds their origin in the Lord but their essence is not created by the Lord because that essence is without beginning. Just like if I take a few gallons of water out of the ocean in order to create an aquarium in my house. It would be wrong to say that I actually created a mini ocean in my glass container. But it would be correct to say that I manipulated the ocean water to create a unique situation where the ocean water in my aquarium is functioning separately from the ocean as a mini ocean. All existence is like that. Everything is essentially comprised of the same eternal beginningless substance, but the Lord manipulates that self same substance and by doing so the varieties of existence comes into being. The whole point of this criticism of the Bhagavata and Pancaratras by the Advaitins is because they believe that the goal of life is to go back to the essential undifferentiated state of existence, to turn back into Brahman without a personal existence to live life with. They believe that losing their personality and differentiatedness from Brahman is the goal of life. Which is fairly foolish if you think about it. I mean why would Brahman become us if the goal of life for us is lose our individuality only to become Brahman again? That philosophy is based on a simplistic and errant understanding of the Upanishads.

Here we see misrepresentations. "Vaasudeva constitutes the Ultimate Cause, of which the three others are the effects." The three others are not effects nor are they different from Vasudeva. They are all Vasudeva engaged in different activities therefore they are given different nomenclatures in order to teach us the variety of activities of the Lord. Vasudeva, Sankarsana, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha are all one and the same Lord. If I wear one type of clothes for when I work in the garden and then a different type of clothes for when I attend a marriage ceremony and then a different type of clothes when I fight in a battle we would not say that there is a cause and effect relationship between the clothes I wear in relation to each other. Secondarily Sankarsana does not refer to the jiva. Sankarsana is the Lord of the Jiva, the origin of the jiva (in the sense of the drop of water in the ocean having it's origin in the ocean)

More misrepresentation. The Sutra is refering to the oneness of everything within Brahman. Since everything has it's origin in Brahman therefore although there is the appearance of one thing being created by another thing in reality everything already exists in some form or another. For example if we take gold and make bangles it may appear that the bangle was created by an artisan, and in one sense it was. But in the absolute sense the gold already existed and the person who built the bangle simply manipulated that which already existed. So the sutra is telling us that everything in existence was never created because in the absolute sense everything is a manifestation of a manipulation of the eternal substance of Brahman, which is without creation. Therefore the sutra tells us that the substance of reality was not created. Swami Sivananda wrote:

"But the Bhagavatas teach that from an agent, viz., the individual soul termed Sankarshana, there springs its internal instrument or mind (Pradyumna) and from the mind, the ego or Ahamkara (Aniruddha)."

The Bhagavata does not teach that. Sankarsana is the origin of jiva, the abode of the jiva, one and different from the jiva. Aniruddha and Pradyumna as ego and mind are not the product of the jiva and nowhere in the Bhagavata do we find such teachings.

What is the material ego (ahankara)? It is the illusioned vision of the jiva. The ahankara springs up from the mahat-tattva (material world) in the sense that this world we see around us fools us into accepting that which is not real as real. We see so much variety and so much apparent cause and effect that we take everything in the world as being independently occuring free from an overarching transcendant control. We see people places and things as being the causes of all effects. In truth everything ...read more