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changes of form from time to time, so that no condition of life short of nirvana can be a permanent state of existence. Hence, the soul which goes to heaven or hell returns to the human or animal kingdom on the termination of its life in those regions.
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
Here we may incidentally remark that the confusion of thought prevailing among the numerous sects of reincarnationists themselves, as to whether a human soul can be born again in an animal body, finds an easy solution in the nature of the kârmána sarira. People do not take the trouble to work out the process of re-incarnation, and merely wrangle in empty words and concepts, the sense of which they do not themselves grasp; therefore, their disputations seldom lead to any substantial truths. In the light of the above remarks, it is clear that being born in a human or an animal body is just the question which depends on the human or animal tendencies lying latent in the 'creative momentum', i.e., the kârmâna sarira. We have no doubt whatever on the point that whenever the animal propensities preponderate over and outweigh the nobler human tendencies of the ego, it cannot help being born in an animal body, the species being determined by the degree of brutal instincts evolved out by the soul. Those who ill-treat their fellow beings, who show no mercy to the weaker in their dealings with men, who slaughter helpless, dumb creatures for the sake of food, or trade, who rob poor widows and defenceless orphans, and all those who persist in the path of villainy and vice, subject themselves to future incarnations as beasts and brutes. On the other hand, many of our dumb friends who have
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