Questions of King Milinda Part 01

SR No.: 007681
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

Page 867

VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
the power of modifying itself, thus the soul of him who knows, although one only, multiplying itself through its lordly power, enters into all those bodies. For scripture declares that in this way one may become many, 'He is onefold, he is threefold, fivefold, sevenfold' (Kh. Up. VII, 26, 2). And this is not possible, if we should accept the simile of the wooden puppets, or the entering of other souls into those additional bodies1. Nor again can there be any motion on the part of bodies destitute of souls.Nor is there any force in the objection that, because the Self and the Manas cannot be divided, they cannot be in connexion with more than one body. For the Self, because possessing the quality of having true wishes (i. e. wishes which become real), may be supposed to create other bodies with internal organs, conformable to the original one organ; and, the Self dividing itself through the division of its limiting adjuncts, it may be possible to give a soul to each created body. This is the topic which the books on Yoga treat, in the chapters explaining the connexion of one soul with several bodies.-But how can lordly power, enabling the released soul to enter into several bodies, be admitted, if we consider that different scriptural texts declare that the soul in that state has not any specific cognition? so e.g. 'Whereby should he know another?' 'For there is then no second, nothing else different from him that he could know; An ocean is that one seer, without any duality' (Bri. Up. II, 4, 14; IV, 3, 30; 32).
To this objection the next Sûtra replies.
414
16. (What scripture says about absence of all specific cognition) refers either to deep sleep or union (release); for this is manifested (by the texts).
By entering into one's own Self' is meant dreamless
1 I. e. the scriptural statement about one Self rendering itself manifold can neither be reconciled with the hypothesis of the other bodies being moved by the one soul as puppets are moved by one person through strings, nor with the hypothesis of a new separate soul entering each new body.
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