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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GODS.
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meted out by any human or super-human agency, what is our authority for ascribing the fruition of other karmas to the decree of a calculating and judging divinity? Not only is there no such judicial agency to be found anywhere in nature, but the necessity for its existence is also absolutely counter-indicated by the facts of observation. For the same natural law which determines that the hand which is placed on fire should be burnt and that the hatchet that strikes at the root of the tree should be the instrument of punishment to the man seated on the trunk the same law which promulgates these decrees, we say, also declares that the man who denies what he has seen with his eyes should be deprived of his vision in the life to come. There is no dark mysticism involved in this; on the contrary, the punishment indicated is directly traceable to natural causation, for the formation of all bodily limbs, including the organs of vision, being the effect of the operation of energies residing in the karmâņa sarîra of the soul, it is but natural that the organs to be formed must undergo appropriate, modification where the forces responsible for their manufacturing are themselves modified by individual actions. Now, when a person denies the evidence of his senses, e.g., the existence of a thing which is lying before him, he is forced to keep his eyes turned away from it as far as possible, to avoid his gaze falling on it. The result is that his eyes are forced into an unnatural and strained attitude, in consequence of which the asrava of matter is diverted from its natural course, its particles finding lodgment in places not intended for
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