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As for working off the effects of karmas, we may anticipate the next chapter to a certain extent and say that no one whose being is a continuing source of affliction and ill-luck to other living beings, especially to weaker souls, can ever hope to rise to that high and sublime status which is unattainable except by those who are the most merciful and compassionate. What misfortune can be too great, what calamity too severe, for him who separates the flesh of poor confiding animals from their bones, so that he and his friends might emulate Epicure for one passing moment at their meal? We would cry out immediately if a pin pricked us; but we have no thought for the extreme agony which we inflict on another soul when tearing off its flesh from its limbs, as if it had no right even to its own body! Abject slaves to the senses, we should pause and consider where the tongue is dragging us to? Ahimsû is the first and the foremost qualification for progress on the path that takes us out of this terrible region of births and deaths to the land of Everlasting Glory and Joy and Immortality. The path might, no doubt, appear to be thorny and uphill in the first instance, but he who perseveres shall discover, ere long, that it appears so only to keep off undesirable intruders, and that, in reality and truth, it is full of life and joy for the soul.
RE-INCARNATION.
As regards the association of the soul with its outer body of gross matter, that is determined by what is known as ayuh karma on the exhaustion of which it must come to an end in due course of time, sooner or later. Short of this, the power of the soul to avoid
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