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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
they have come for the first time into the world? Reincarnation and re-incarnation alone explains these facts, and also accounts for the differences between the animal, the vegetable and the human souls. Reject re-incarnation, put the soul, for all the past eternity of time, in a region of stagnation and inaction, and you will find that you cannot bring it into the world at all except on the hypothesis of chance, or, what is even worse, the miracle of a divine command.
another to serve in slavery, and so forth. Why does God, the Just, the Merciful, the Omnipotent, discriminate between his creatures in this manner? Theology has no sensible reply to give; but Vedanta with its doctrine of Maya, tries to explain the situation as follows:--
“Here is a master who goes into the garden at one time, and goes into the mansion at another time, and goes into the dingy dungeon at one time, and goes into the toilet at some other time, goes into the kitchen himself, and lives also under a burden himself. What will you call him ? Is he unjust? No, No. He were unjust if the people whom he kept in the dungeon, or in the garden, or in the mansion, or in the toilet were different from him, but it is he himself who resorts to the toilet, and he himself who goes into the other places, if it is he himself who does all these things, then he is not unjust. Then all the blame is taken off him" (In the Woods of God Realization, Vol. III. 36-7).
And Sufeism chimes in :
خود کوزه و خود کوزه گر و خود گل کوزه * خود بر سر آن کوزه خریدار بر آمد
[Tr. Himself the pot, himself the potter, himself the material of the pot; himself appears also as the purchaser of the pot.']
Vedanta itself does not go quite so far as Sufeism, since it is not its doctrine that Brahman itself becomes the material of the 'pot,' though certain passages in the writings of Shankaracharya himself are open to that interpretation. As for the merit of the explanation, it is sufficient to say, with Schopenhauer, that a God, who, from the beginningless eternity, has been acting in this manner must have been tormented by the Devil.
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