________________
THE THREE PURUSHAS
that which is transient and changing. If it did not exist, there would be no escape from the bondage of life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue ; we should be prisoners in a cage without a door, beating our wings against the bars in vain for an exit ; life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue would be eternal, ineffugable realities, not temporary rules determining the great game of life, and we should be unwilling actors, not free playmates of God able to suspend and renew the game when we will. It is by realising our oneness with the akshara purusha that we get freedom from ignorance, freedom from the cords of desire, freedom from the imperative law of works. On the other hand, if the akshara purusha were all, as the Sankhya philosophy contends, there would be no basis for different experience, no varying personality, every individual existence would be precisely like every other individual experience, the development and experience of one soul in Nature, an exact
83
