 The philosophical upshot of Śaṅkara’s metaphysic is that no form or object constitutes the fundamental ground of existence. This explains why one cannot isolate existence itself through hierarchical descension or ascension in the realm of causation and objects. If this very effort is misguided, then the non-finding of existence in an object does not entail an absolute absence of existence, nor the object’s emergence from non-existence. He rejects the presupposition that objects possess a property of existence, or that the object delimits existence in spatial-temporal ways. Existence is formless and nondual in reality. Therefore, in light of Śaṅkara’s theory of causation, one cannot attribute independent reality to an object. Objects are divisible, derivative, dependent, and transient. They are merely names, nominalist wholes that lack any independent being. By negating the reality of their name and form one discovers that objects are in fact numerically identical to formless existence. If this existence is not bound by space or time, which are also forms, it must be nondual. (See Śaṅkara on BrSū 2.1.15, ChU 6.2.2, and BhG 2.16 for further discussion of these points).