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PRACTICE OF KARMA YOGA
humanity for some offences.
It may be asked, if all non-human states of being are only the results of the previous human Karma, in the beginning stage of the universe, there must have been only men and nothing else; is there any authority to show that there was a time when there were men alone and that the non-human states of being appeared only later on? The question assumes that there was a beginning for the universe. It may be that every Kalpa or Cycle of the universe has a beginning; but at the beginning of a Kalpa the universe takes the appearance in the condition in which it was just before the Pralaya or dissolution that preceded the Kalpa in question. The universe, with this alternate existence of Kalpa and Pralaya has had no beginning at all. None can say that there was a beginning for the existence of the power of Maya in the Self. As there was no beginning for the universe, there could not have been any period of time when there were men alone. At all times there have been human as well as non-human states of being in the manifested universe.
d. True Evolution
What then is true evolution? It is, as once before stated, the progress of the thinker in man from his present condition of limitedness to the state of the unlimited Self. Progress of the thinker means im
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