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ESCHATOLOGY
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brahma. (3) The tritîyam sthânam, including the later theories of hells, teaches punishment in them, and again punishment by returning to earth in the form of lower castes, animals, and plants. All these various and fantastical ways of Samsara are considered as true, quite as true as this world is, but not more. For the whole world and the whole way of Samsara is valid and true for those only who are in the avidyâ, not for those who have overcome it, as we have to show now.
The esoteric Vedânta does not admit the reality of the world nor of the Samsara, for the only reality is Brahman, seized in ourselves as our own Âtman. The knowledge of this Atman, the great intelligence: "aham brahmą asmi", does not produce moksha (deliverance), but is moksha itself. Then we obtain what the Upanishad say:
भिद्यते हृदयग्रन्थि: छिद्यन्ते सर्वसंशयाः। क्षीयन्ते चास्य कर्माणि'
तस्मिनदृष्टे परावरे।। When seeing Brahma as the highest and the lowest everywhere, all knots of our heart, all sorrows are split, all doubts vanish, and our works become nothing. Certainly no man can live without doing work, and so also the Jivanmukta; but he knows, that all these works are illusive, as this whole world is, and therefore they do not adhere to him not produce for him a new life after death.--And what kind of work may such a man do?
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