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I ADHYÂYA, 3 PÂDA, 18.
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18. Should it be said that from a subsequent passage (it appears that the individual Soul is meant); rather (the soul) in so far as its true nature has become manifest.
The Porvapakshin now maintains that we ascertain from a subsequent declaration made by Pragàpati that it is just the individual Soul that possesses freedom from sin and the other qualities enumerated. The whole teaching of Pragapati, he says, refers to the individual Soul only. Indra having heard that Pragàpati had spoken about a Self free from sin, old age, &c., the enquiry into which enables the soul to obtain all worlds and desires, approaches Praga pati with the wish to learn the true nature of that Self which should be enquired into. Pragâ pati thereupon, wishing to test the capacity of his pupil for receiving true instruction, gives him successive information about the embodied soul in the state of waking, dream and dreamless sleep. When he finds that Indra sees no good in instruction of this kind and thus shows himself fit to receive instruction about the true nature of the disembodied Self, he explains to him that the body is a mere abode for a ruling Self; that that bodiless Self is essentially immortal; and that the soul, as long as it is joined to a body due to karman, is compelled to experience pleasure and pain corresponding to its embodied state, while it rises above all this when it has freed itself from the body (VIII, 12, 1). He then continues :
Thus that serenity having risen from this body and approached the highest light, appears in its own form'; thus teaching him the true nature, free from a body, of the individual soul. He next informs him that the 'highest light' which the soul reaches is the supreme Person (That is the supreme Person'), and that the soul having reached that highest light and freed itself from what obscured its own true nature, obtains in the world of Brahman whatever enjoyments it desires, and is no longer connected with a body springing from karman and inseparable from pain and pleasure, or with anything else that causes distress. ("He moves about there laughing,' &c.). He next illus
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