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Law of Karma
possibility and actuality. Dr. Radhakrishnan observes : "We may distinguish between God as distinct from the lesser spirit who derive their being from him and the Absolute which comprehends all conceivable existence. God, spirits and matter are the Absolute, and not God alone.”:0
In fact, Dr. Radhakrishnan feels that the qualities of existence, order, development, purposefulness, etc. that we notice in the world, demand an ontological foundation, and that can be provided by nothing less than the Absolute. "Why is there existence? Why is there anything at all ? If everything disappeared there would be utter nothingness. If that nothingness did not provide or was not itself the possibility of being, there could not have been anything at all. The existence of the world are imperfect and impermanent and nothing that is imperfect can subsist of itself or by itself, for in so far as it is imperfect it is not. The Upanishads lead us from the imperfect existences in the world to the Supreme and Absolute Being... the existence of the world means the primacy of Being."'21 .With God conceived as the creative principle of the world, it becomes easy for Dr. Radhakrishnan to give spiritualistic account of creation and the world. He is against materialistic or naturalistic explanation of the universe. The materialistic explanations are mechanistic and they took upon the world as a sort of an automatic machine which goes on working in a blind and haphazard way. That is why Dr. Radhakrishnan adopts an idealistic explanation of the world. And here comes the question of the soul.
Individual Self and Real Self
To understand Dr. Radhakrishnan's account of the nature of the soul, it is essential to take note of two things in the very beginning. First, Radhakrishnan tries to remain faithful to the Indian tradition, and as such, he is convinced about the ultimate spirituality of man.
Secondly, he is realistic enough to be impressed by the present-day conditions of man. He is aware of the fact that man, as we find him in the world, is a biological and psycho
