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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
'fall' would seem to suggest. That legend is useful only in so far as it points to the latent divinity of the soul, but not any farther. It is true that there is a great deal of rise and fall in the status of the jiva in the course of its transmigration, but the two ends of the line, the one marked by the condition of nigoda and the other by the Perfection of Gods, are unalterably fixed. As a matter of fact, the author of the legend of the fall' did not intend to suggest that a perfect God had fallen into the state of wretchedness and sin, but that the story was to be taken as a reminder of the latency of godly virtues and power within the soul. Hence, the jiva who, having attained to human status, does not try to realise bis divinity, but becomes absorbed in the pursuit of sensual gratification, may truly be said to experience a fall. It is the employment of intellect to pander to the animal passions and carnal appetites which constitutes the fall. Man is a thinking being and has the Ideal of greatness put before him, but when he discards it in favour of a brute's existence and falls from the position of the thinker to that of the sensualist, he experiences a fall from a higher to a lower status. It is with difficulty that one obtains birth as a man in the course of evolution; but having obtained it, if he again lives the life of a brute, there is no better word for it than 'Fall.'
According to Kapila, the founder of the Sankhyan philosophy, evolution is really an involution, in the first instance, so that the Purusha, i.e., pure Spirit, first of all descends into matter, and becomes ensouled in it, evolving out intellect, ahamkara, and the like, one after another. But, as we said in the last chapter, this
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