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THE TRUTH
79
influences have ceased, then it can only feel its own natural state. It must have a natural state of feeling for modifications to come in. Unfeeling substances cannot be made to feel anything, much less pleasure and pain and happiness.
The innate natural feeling of the soul is joy, which is smothered under external burdens. When the foreign burdens are lifted off temporarily glimpses are caught of this natural joy in the shape of the emotion of freedom. When they are completely removed, it is left in the state of eternal freedom. It will be a continuous unending feast of Happiness which the soul will enjoy then!
All external objects are potent causes of worry, hence in the nature of a burden on the soul. They have to be acquired and protected and retained, and re-acquired if lost. When the mind deliberately gives up the sense of attachment for them, it is released from so much burden of worries as corresponds to the amount of its relinquishment. If objects are renounced altogether, the greatest amount of happiness should result. Those who have perfected themselves in renunciation are truly happy!
How shall we imagine this inner feeling of a simple substance like the soul? As a quality of its being ! Qualities may become dormant and inactive under foreign
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