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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS.
Hence we conclude that it is one and the same man who finishes on the latter day the work begun on the former.In the second place the person rising from sleep is the same who went to sleep, for the reason that otherwise he could not remember what he had seen, &c., on the day before ; for what one man sees another cannot remember. And if another Self rose from sleep, the consciousness of personal identity (åtmânusmarana) expressed in the words,
I am the same I was before,' would not be possible.-In the third place we understand from Vedic texts that the same person rises again, 'He hastens back again as he came, to the place from which he started, to be awake' (Bri. Up. IV, 3, 16); 'All these creatures go day after day into the Brahma-world and yet do not discover it' (Kh. Up. VIII, 3, 2); Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a musquito, that they become again and again' (Kh. Up. VI, 10, 2). These and similar passages met with in the chapters treating of sleeping and waking have a proper sense only if the same soul rises again.—In the fourth place we arrive at the same conclusion on the ground of the injunctions of works and knowledge, which, on a different theory, would be meaningless. For if another person did rise, it would follow that a person might obtain final release by sleep merely, and what then, we ask, would be the use of all those works which bear fruit at a later period, and of knowledge ?–Moreover on the hypothesis of another person rising from sleep, that other person would either be a soul which had up to that time carried on its phenomenal life in another body; in that case it would follow that the practical existence carried on by means of that body would be cut short. If it be said that the soul which went to sleep may, in its turn, rise in that other body (so that B would rise in A's body and A in B's body), we reply that that would be an altogether useless hypothesis ; for what advantage do we derive from assuming that each soul rises from sleep not in the same body in which it had gone to sleep, but that it goes to sleep in one body and rises in another ?–Or else the soul rising (in A's body) would be
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| SR No. | 007681 |
| Book Title | Questions of King Milinda Part 01 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | T W Rhys Davids |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1890 |
| Total Pages | 2695 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 47 MB |