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I ADHYÂYA, I PÂDA, 4.
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rope it also admits of being sublated by knowledge, and may therefore, apart from all injunction, be put an end to by the simple comprehension of the sense of certain texts. If final release were to be brought about by injunctions, it would follow that it is not eternal-not any more than the heavenly world and the like; while yet its eternity is admitted by every one. Acts of religious merit, moreover (such as are prescribed by injunctions), can only be the causes of certain results in so far as they give rise to a body capable of experiencing those results, and thus necessarily produce the so-called samsara-state (which is opposed to final release, and) which consists in the connexion of the soul with some sort of body, high or low. Release, therefore, is not something to be brought about by acts of religious merit. In agreement herewith Scripture says, 'For the soul as long as it is in the body, there is no release from pleasure and pain; when it is free from the body, then neither pleasure nor pain touch it' (Kh. Up. VIII, 12, 1). This passage declares that in the state of release, when the soul is freed from the body, it is not touched by either pleasure or pain—the effects of acts of religious merit or demerit; and from this it follows that the disembodied state is not to be accomplished by acts of religious merit. Nor may it be said that, as other special results are accomplished by special injunctions, so the disembodied state is to be accomplished by the injunction of meditation ; for that state is essentially something not to be effected. Thus scriptural texts say, 'The wise man who knows the Self as bodiless among the bodies, as persisting among nonpersisting things, as great and all-pervading; he does not grieve' (Ka. Up. I, 2, 22); That person is without breath, without internal organ, pure, without contact' (Mu. Up. II, 1, 2).-Release which is a bodiless state is eternal, and cannot therefore be accomplished through meritorious acts.
In agreement herewith Scripture says, 'That which thou seest apart from merit (dharma) and non-merit, from what is done and not done, from what exists and what has to be accomplished—tell me that'(Ka. Up. I, 2, 14).—Consider what follows also. When we speak of something being
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