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universe. And, yet, if the real soul is only one, the beings whose experiences are only painful must necessarily be either altogether non-existent, or only the one soul. But the latter hypothesis is not only not supported by any single fact of observation, but is also actually contradicted by experience, inasmuch as no solitary individual can possibly feel himself as many, or undergo different kinds of experience in different parts of the world at one and the same time; and the former leads to an absurdity, since an absolute non-entity cannot be endowed with feelings, memory and the like, which observation and introspection certainly show to be the properties of the individual soul. Hence, it is repugnant to intellect to say that there is only one soul in existence in the universe.
Furthermore, the significance of the idea of moksha can only be the annihilation of the individual, if the speculations of Vedanta, as to the existence of only one being, be accepted as correct, for it has no meaning for one who is always free and blissful,--and so far as Brahman is concerned, he is described as eternally free and blissful,--and the individual soul, who longs to attain it, is only a bundle of illusion, which is to be destroyed, so that Brahman, the solitary being, posited by the Advaita Vedanta, might remain the sole and undisputed monarch of all he surveys. Thus for the individual extinction rather than emancipation, i.e., the realisation of a life more full and abundant, is the logical consequence of Advaitism. It is this feature of the teaching of the absolute Monism of Vedanta which has led some of the European Scholars to regard it as a form of pessimism.
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