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PHILOSOPHY OF SOUL
211
Great men said, "Rise up, rise up again and think what good acts you performed during the day when sun has escaped to the horizon in the evening having snatched away a piece of your life-thread.”
But you enjoy slumbers of indolence and stupidity. So you do not rise, you do not wake up and even if you are wakeful you never think on these lines.
Life is contracted according to your feelings, mental attitude and your actions. If they are auspicious, auspicious life is contracted and in the case of evil tendencies and evil acts evil life is contracted. Therefore one should always entertain good auspicious feelings, acts, tendencies, and should rejoice fully in righteous acts and rites prescribed by the men of knowledge and wisdom. One who spends his life throughout in atrocious, evil and sinful acts, contracts wretched life. Indeed there is an exception. Some persons live the entire life in meritorious manner, but at the time of contraction of next life their feelings, and intentions become evil and sinful. Consequently they secure evil life. Similarly some persons spend their entire life in unrighteousness but at the time of contracting next life they entertain auspicious intentions which secure auspicious next life for them. But such incidents are very rare and are only exceptions. The general and royal route is mentioned above.
We know well our birth date, but we do not know our death date. This implies that we should be conscious and conscientious and perform acts of goodness.
Human beings, creatures with life of limited number of years contract next life in one third part of their life. A man with life of 60 years contracts his next life just when he completes his forty vears. He has still to live one third of his life. If he does not contract then, then he does so after he coinpletes two third part of the remaining part of his life, i.e. after he completes 13 years and 4 months more. If he does not contract then, then he does so after he completes, 2/3rd portion of what remans, i.e. 6 years and 8 months. Thus go on making 1/3rd of the remaining portion of his life. Even if he does not contract at all then he does so at the last moment of his life. He does not die unless he has contracted his next life.
