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II ADHYÂYA, I PÂDA, 15.
439
several avidyas on the basis of the very souls which are assumed to be due to those avidyas. And if you attempt to give to the argument a somewhat different turn, by maintaining that it is the avidyas abiding in the earlier souls which fictitiously give rise to the later souls, we point out that this implies the souls being short-lived only, and moreover that each soul would have to take upon itself the consequences of deeds not its own and escape the consequences of its own deeds. The same reasoning disposes of the hypothesis that it is Brahman which effects the fictitious existence of the subsequent souls by means of the avidyas abiding within the earlier souls. And if there is assumed a beginningless flow of avidyâs, it follows that there is also a beginningless flow of the condition of the souls dependent on those avidyas, and that steady uniformity of the state of the souls which is supposed to hold good up to the moment of Release could thus not be established. Concerning your assertion that, as Nescience is something unreal and hence altogether unproved, it is not disestablished by such defects as mutual dependence which touch real things only; we remark that in that case Nescience would cling even to released souls and the highest Brahman itself.—But impure Nescience cannot cling to what has for its essence pure cognition - Is Nescience then to be dealt with by rational arguments ? If so, it will follow that, on account of the arguments set forth (mutual dependence, and so on), it likewise does not cling to the individual souls. We further put the following question-When the Nescience abiding in the individual soul passes away, owing to the rise of the knowledge of truth, does then the soul also perish or does it not perish ? In the former case Release is nothing else but destruction of the essential nature of the soul; in the latter case the soul does not attain Release even on the destruction of Nescience, since it continues to exist as soul different from Brahman.—You have further maintained that the distinction of souls as pure and impure, &c., admits of being accounted for in the same way as the dimness or clearness, and so on, of the different images of a face as
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