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VEDÂNTA-SOTRAS..
joints of the other, the name of the one is the name of the other' (Kh. Up. I, 7).—Here there arises the doubt whether that person dwelling within the eye and the sun be the individual soul called Aditya, who through accumu. lation of religious merit possesses lordly power, or the highest Self other than that soul.
That individual soul of high merit, the Parvapakshin maintains. For the text states that that person has a body, and connexion with a body belongs to individual souls only, for it is meant to bring the soul into contact with pleasure and pain, according to its deserts. It is for this reason that Scripture describes final Release where there is ao connexion with works as a state of disembodiedness.
So long as he is in the body he cannot get free from pleasure and pain. But when he is free from the body, then neither pleasure nor pain touches him' (Kh. Up. VIII, 12, 1). And a soul of transcendent merit may possess surpassing wisdom and power, and thus be capable of being lord of the worlds and the wishes (1,6,8). For the same reason such a soul may be the object of devout meditation, bestow rewards, and by being instrumental in destroying evil, be helpful towards final release. Even among men some are seen to be of superior knowledge and power, owing to superior religious merit; and this holds good with regard to the Siddhas and Gandharvas also; then with regard to the devas; then with regard to the divine beings, beginning with Indra. Hence, also, one among the divine beings, beginning with Brahma, may in each kalpa reach, through a particularly high degree of merit, vast lordly power and thus effect the creation of the world, and so on. On this supposition the texts about that which constitutes the cause of the world and the inward Self of the world must also be understood to refer to some such soul which, owing to superiority of merit, has become all-knowing and all-powerful. A so-called highest Self, different from the individual souls, does not therefore exist. Where the texts speak of that which is neither coarse nor fine nor short, &c., they only mean to characterise the individual soul; and those texts also which refer to final
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