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II ADHYAYA, 2 PÂDA, 36.
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and re-enter the elements; for the soul is immaterial. Nor have we any means to prove the existence of some other, general or special, reservoir of soul-particles.-Moreover, on the hypothesis under discussion the soul would be of indefinite nature, as the size of the particles acceding and departing is itself indefinite. On account of all these and similar difficulties it cannot be maintained that certain particles by turns attach themselves to, and detach themselves from, the soul.
The Satra may be taken in a different sense also. The preceding Sūtra has proved that the soul if of the same size as the body cannot be permanent, as its entering into bigger and smaller bodies involves its limitation. To this the Gymnosophist may be supposed to rejoin that although the soul's size successively changes it may yet be permanent, just as the stream of water is permanent (although the water continually changes). An analogous instance would be supplied by the permanency of the stream of ideas while the individual ideas, as that of a red cloth and so on, are non-permanent.-To this rejoinder our Sûtra replies that if the stream is not real we are led back to the doctrine of a general void, and that, if it is something real, the difficulties connected with the soul's changing, &c. present themselves and render the Gaina view impossible.
36. And on account of the permanency of the final (size of the soul) and the resulting permanency of the two (preceding sizes) there is no difference (of size, at any time).
Moreover, the Gainas themselves admit the permanency of the final size of the soul which it has in the state of release. From this it follows also that its initial size and its intervening sizes must be permanent, and that hence
· The inference being that the initial and intervening sizes of the soul must be permanent because they are sizes of the soul, like its final size. [34]
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