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THE PRACTICAL PATH.
of purely mythical gods opened the door to the worship of semi-mythological characters taken from history,
himself into a Sudra, Esa (the Lord) degrades himself into a jiva. The myriads of jivas will, at every creation, shine beyond number. Through the flutter of that causal ideation, the jivic Iswaras will be generated in every stage (of evolution). But the cause is not here (in this world). The jivas that arise from Eswara and flourish thereby, subject themselves to repeated re-births, through the karmas performed by them. This, Rama, is the relationship of cause and effect, though there is no cause for the rise of the jivas, yet existence and karmas are reciprocally the cause of one another. All the jivas arise, without cause, out of the Brahmic seat; yet, after their rise, their karmas are the cause of their pleasures and pains, And sankalp [desire) arising from the delusion of the ignorance of Atma is the cause of all karmas."
Such is the Hindu conception of the one becoming the many, and, although the philosophy is faulty and only in the nature of a makeshift to escape from the difficulties arising from the notion that pure mental abstractions, that is to say, abstract qualities, are capable of existing apart from the concrete things in which they are found, still it is necessary to entertain the idea for the proper elucidation of the mystery surrounding the conception of Indra and other Hindu deities,
To proceed with the explanation of the legend of adultery committed by Indra with Ahalyâ, the wife of his guru, it will be noticed that intercourse with matter is absolutely forbidden to the soul, since móksha only implies their separation from each other. Hence the penetration of spirit into matter is a forbidden act, and is for that reason described as adultery. Now, since matter is an exclusive object of knowledge for the intellect (Gautama=wise), which is the tutor of will, the intercourse between spirit and matter becomes an act of adultery with the preceptor's wife. The result of the entry of spirit, conceived as an abstract whole, into matter is the formation of an infinity of jivas (as described in the passage from the Yoga Vashishtha) each of which becomes ensouled in a body of material particles, and, under the blinding influence of matter, resembles an ugly spot. These, however, soon attain Self-consciousness by the knowledge and acknowledgment of Self (metaphorically,
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