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THE FIVE LABDIIS
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existence. If the soul should continue but consciousness cease, we should be as good as non-existent; whereas if the soul should be annihilated but consciousness still go on, we should exist as truly as now. Thus our existence is bound up with that of consciousness, not with that of the Soul ; or, as I said before, the existence of consciousness is our existence."
'The error in the above is clearly in the assumption that the teaching was that the soul was separate from consciousness. The criticism is justified ; but the learned professor was prevented, by what we would call the forces of deluding karınas, from a full and proper enquiry concerning the teaching of Religion about the nature of the soul. He should not have accepted the statement of a partial scholar as the view of Religion proper ; for Religion proper has always maintained that the soul cannot be separated from consciousness; rather, on the contrary, its teaching only is that Soul and Intelligence are but two words which describe what is only one thing. Soul is Knowledge (consciousness), Knowledge is Soul; and because the two are actually inseparable from each other, therefore when the causes whose operation now debars the Soul from bringing into realization the ful-ness of its intelligent nature are removed, it will not only remain conscious but become OMNISCIENT. Probably the learned professor only read some of the current Christian views, and hastily jumped to the conclusion that they formed the last word on the subject. Whether any one said or knew any thing different from these current misconceptions of the Christian theologians did not worry him. Is not Christianity the supreme revelation ? This is the effect of haste, which is itself the outcome of a hasty disposition, in other words, the product of the karma-energy which gives rise to a hasty disposition.
The late Professor Haeckel, too, assumed, on the basis of another of the misconceptions current in Christian theolo. gical circles, that the soul should be absolutely unchanging
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