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THE PRACTICAL DHARMA
bliss, to say nothing of omniscience, omnipotence, and all those other divine qualities and powers which men associate with their gods, will be possible with the greatest ease, not only to every virtuous jīva, but to every rogue, rascal and sinner as well. Even the act of murdering a fellow-being will have to be regarded as a highly meritorious deed, and suicide acclaimed as the shortest cut to the heaven of the highest divinity. Dogs and cats and the whole host of creeping things and the like will also, on such a supposition, find their differences of developwent abolished at a stroke. The path of salvation, too, will no longer consist in Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct, but will lie on the point of the butcher's knife, or through the friendly and accommodating grave of a cannibal's stomach.
The absurdity of the proposition need not be dilated upon any further; it is a sufficient refutation of the notion that death effects a complete severance between spirit and matter, and shows that the kārmāņa sarīra never leaves the soul till perfection is attained. The question, when was the kārmāņa śarīra formed for the first time?-does not arise; it could only arise on the supposition that a perfectly pure spirit had descended or condescended to enter into bondage, but this has been already seen to be an un-entertainable hypothesis. It follows from this that all the souls now involved in bondage and their number is infinite -have always been in an impure and imperfect state. There is nothing surprising in this conclusion, for just as gold is found in a mine in an impure condition without any one having ever deposited the pure metal there, so are souls to be taken as having existed in a condition of impurity from all eternity.
The only possible counter-hypothesis of the renewal of bondage by the order of an extra-supreme God is met by the argument that there can be no possible ground for distinction between one pure spirit and another. Since the qualities of substances do not vary to suit individual whims, all pure spirits must possess the same attributes. Hence, there can be no such thing as a God of Gods. On the other hand, if it be said that the supposed extra-supreme being is a pure spirit plus some thing else, that will make his being a compounded organism which experience and observation prove to be liable to disintegration and decay.
