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THE SYSTEMS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
(b) The non-enlightened soul is unable to look through and beyond Apel, which like a veil hides from it its true nature. Instead of recognizing itself to be Brahman it blindly identifies itself with its adjuncts (उपाधिs)-the fictitious offsprings of माया, and thus looks for its true self in the body, the sense-organs and the internal organ Hd, i. e., the organ of specific cognition. The soul, which in reality is pure intelligence, nonactive, infinite, thus becomes limited in extent, as it were, limited in knowledge and power, an agent and enjoyer. Through its actions it burdens itself with merit and demerit, the consequences of which it has to bear or enjoy in series of future embodied.existences, the Lord-as retributor and dispenser-allotting to each soul that form of embodiment to which it is entitled by its previous actions. At the end of each of the great world periods called 7c9s, the Lord retracts the whole world, i. e. the whole material world is dissolved and merged into non-distinct HT while the individual souls, free for the time from actual connection with 39ès, lie in deep slumber as it were. But as the consequences of their former deeds are not yet exhausted they have again to enter an embodied existence as soon as the Lord sends forth a new material world, and the old round of birth, action, death begins anew to last to all eternity as it has lasted from all eternity.
(c) The means of escaping from this endless SET, the way out of which can never be found by the nonenlightened soul, are furnished by the Veda. The Pois indeed whose purport it is to enjoin certain actions cannot lead to final release, for even the most meritorious works necessarily lead to new forms of embodied existence. And in the 3177915 of the Veda also two different parts have to be distinguished, viz.
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