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IV ADHYAYA, I PÂDA, 15.
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turn back from it.'-'But at death.' The word 'but' is meant for emphatical assertion. As it is established that good as well as evil works-which are both causes of bondage-do, owing to the strength of knowledge, on the one hand not cling and on the other hand undergo destruction, there necessarily results final release of him who knows as soon as death takes place.
15. But only those former (works) whose effects have not yet begun (are destroyed by knowledge); because (scripture states) that (i. e. the death of the body) to be the term.
In the two preceding adhikaranas it has been proved that good as well as evil works are annihilated through knowledge. We now have to consider the question whether this annihilation extends, without distinction, to those works whose effects have already begun to operate as well as to those whose effects have not yet begun; or only to works of the latter kind.
Here the purvapakshin maintains that on the ground of scriptural passages such as 'He thereby overcomes both,' which refer to all works without any distinction, all works whatever must be considered to undergo destruction.
To this we reply, 'But only those whose effects have not begun.' Former works, i. e. works, whether good or evil, which have been accumulated in previous forms of existence as well as in the current form of existence before the origination of knowledge, are destroyed by the attainment of knowledge only if their fruit has not yet begun to operate. Those works, on the other hand, whose effects have begun and whose results have been half enjoyedi.e. those very works to which there is due the present state of existence in which the knowledge of Brahman arisesare not destroyed by that knowledge. This opinion is founded on the scriptural passage, 'For him there is delay only as long as he is not delivered (from the body)' (Kh. Up. VI, 14, 2), which fixes the death of the body as the term of the attainment of final release. Were it otherwise,
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