Book Title: Law of Karma
Author(s): Nirmala Jha
Publisher: Capital Pubishing House Delhi

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Page 122
________________ 112 Law of Karma as a simple, self-identical, somewhat distinct from its experiences which has attached to it. It is a teleological unity, which is the only thing constant in the concrete, busy, active, dynamic sell. Each soul has its life's star, its main purpose. To quote Upanishad, “Man is altogether formed of his desires." 27 Whai we call a person at any stage is the cross-section of the growing entity. We speak of the person as the same so long as certain determinable characteristics are found for a definita period of time. The organisation of the contents has a specific character which constitutes the individual's uniqueness. As the whole is more than the sum of its parts, it determines the nature of the parts and their functioning. The individual carries his uniqueness even in his thumb prints, as criminals know to their cost. Therefore, Radhakrishnan asserts that in a true sense personality is a mask. It is the part we play in the drama of life. Each of us looks at the world froin a characteristic point of view. The mental data can be systematized in different ways and so long as they are fused into a single whole, we have a single self. The phenomenon of multiple personality points out that for the same period or different periods, we may have different conceptions of our personality due to loss of consciousness or discontinuity. If the experiences are not sufficiently integrated, self hood becomes loose and is often broken up into a series of relatively unconnected systems of behaviour and we have cases of many selves. In all personal experiences, we have the duality between the subject experiencing and the object experienced. The subject of experience is said to be distinct from every moment of experience. It is the persistent substratum which makes all knowledge, recognition and retention possible. Hume reduces the subject to the object and makes the self a bundle of conscious happenings, for he could not find the 'I' among his mental states. There is no explanation as to why the rapidly passing experiences hang together as the experiences of one and the same individual. The laws of association cannot account for this fact. That is why Kant says that the laws of

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