Is the world existent at every time?

There are several important differences between Bhāskara’s Bhedābheda and Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, but I will focus here only on one aspect, namely that of the existence of the world respective to the brahman. According to Bhāskara,

During the cosmic night all is ”one” in brahman, but during the cosmic day the whole universe is spread out and is clearly different from brahman. (Carman 2007, p. 62)

Thus, there are moments of bheda ‘distinction’ and moments of abheda ‘non distinction’ between the brahman and the world.

By contrast, according to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta the world is at every moment of time a characteristic (viśeṣa) of the brahman and in this sense it never ceases to exist completely (see Schmücker forthcoming), nor is it ever completely identical with it.