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also not free to do other things, and we cannot be freed from the results of our acts. Some results may be manifested in great strengh, others very weakly, some may take a very long time and others a very short time; some are of such a nature that they take a long time to work out, while the influence of others may be removed by simply washing with water and that will be the case in the matter of acts done incidentally without any settled purpose or any fixed desire. In such a case with reference to many acts we may counteract their effects by willing to do so. So the theory of Karma is not in any sense a theory of fatalism, but we say that all of us are not going to one goal without any desire on our part, not that we are to reach that state without any effort on our part, but that our present condition is the effect of our acts, thoughts and words in the past state. To say that all will reach the perfect state merely because some one has died that they might be saved, merely from a belief in this person, would be a theory of fatalism, because those who have lived a pure and virtuous state and have not accepted a certain theory will not reach that state while those who accept it will reach the perfected state simply for that reason and no other/ The faith in saviours is simply this, that by following out the divine principle which is in our own selves when this is fully developed we also shall become Christs, by the crucifixion of the lower nature on the altar of the higher. We also use the cross as a symbol. All living beings have to pass through or evolve from the lowest, the monadic, condition to the highest state of existence, and cannot reach this unless they obtain possession of the three things necessary : right belief, right knowledge and right conduct. The right belief is, really speaking, not that there is no passing through forms after death, but the soul keeps progressing always in its own nature without any backward direction at all.1 We have expressed this in clear language without any parables or
1. The meaning of this sentence is not quite clear. May be Gandhi is saying that the possession of 'right belief' does not rule out the possibility of a future birth but that it does rule out the possibility of a future degeneration. (K.K.D)
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