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(1583) Because the soul has conscious activity as its characteristic mark and since this conscious activity is different in each body according to its grades of higher and lower, therefore the souls are infinite in number.
(1584) If there be but one soul, there would be no emancipation, etc as in the case of ether, owing to its ubiquitous character. It would not be the doer (or agent), enjoyer, thinker and it would not be transmigratory, like ether.
(1585) If there be but one soul, it would not be happy, because to a very great extent it would be afflicted, like one who is healthy (or unburt) in respect of (only a small) part of his body. And because it would be bound to a very great extent it would not be emancipated like one only a part of whose body is free (not fettered).
(1586) The soul is only of the size of the body, because it is here that its attributes are found, as is true of the jar; or because it is not cognised elsewhere, (it does not exist outside the body) as cloth does not exist in the jar which is different from it.
(1587) Therefore, (the attributes of being) doer, enjoyer, bound, emancipated, happy, miserable, and transinigratory can properly hold good of those that are many in number and limited in dimension.
(1588-90) And, Gautama, you do not know the (true) meaning of these words of the Veda, viz. "The mass of consciousness itself rising from the elements’, (so) (you believe) that as the wine-spirit rises from constituents of wine so the soul of the nature of consciousness only rises from the aggregate of elements and again perishes after them (i.e- when they perish). And there is no after-life consciousness that in the previous life one had a particular name, was of a particular class (deva, näraka, or any such). The import is that the soul does not pass from one existence (life) to another.
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