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Appendix 2 Gandhi's Questions and Rajchandra's Replies!
Q 1. What is the soul? Does it perform actions? Do the past actions impede its progress or not?
A. (1) As there are physical objects like a pot, a piece of cloth, etc., so there is an entity call the atman? whose essence is knowledge. The former are impermanent. They cannot exist through all time in the same form. The atman is an imperishable entity which exists eternally in the same form. Anything which is not the product of a combination of other elements is imperishable. We cannot think of the atman as being such a product, for, no matter in how many thousand different ways we combine material substances, such combinations cannot possibly produce life and consciousness. Every one of us can know from experience that by combining several elements we cannot produce in the compound a property which is not present in any of those elements. We do not find knowledge to be the essence of physical substances. If we change the forms of such substances and combine them, or if they change and combine by chance, the products will be of the same kind as they are; that is, they will be of a material nature and will not have knowledge as their essence. It is not possible, then, that the atman, which the seers describe as having knowledge as its essential character, can be produced by any substances like a pot, a piece of cloth, etc. The atman has knowledge as its essential character, whereas material substances are characterized by its absence. These are the eternal natures of the two. This and a thousand other reasons
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