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THE SANKHYA PHILOSOPHY
If
without quality25. It is essentially intelligent. soul be unintelligent, it would not be a witness of its own comfort in profound and dreamless sleep26. He does not agree with the Vedantists when they say that soul is one only for it is eternal, omnipresent, changeless, void of blemish; on the contrary, he says that from the fact [that] when one person is born another dies and a third one becomes old at the same time [it follows that] there is a multiplicity of souls.27 If soul were one only, when one is born all must be born28. Both the Vedantists and the Sankhyas are followers of the Veda and in the Veda there are passages like एकमेवाद्वितीयं ब्रह्म (छान्दोग्योपनिषद् 6.2.1), नेह नानास्ति किंचन ( बृहदारण्य - कोपनिषद् 4.4.19 ), मृत्योः स मृत्युमाप्नोति य इह नानेव पश्यति ( कठोपनिषद् 2.1.10) Brahma is one without a second; there is nothing here diverse; death after death does he, the deluded man obtain who here sees as if it were a multiplicity. Kapila gives an ingenious interpretation to these passages. He says that his view of the multiplicity of souls is not opposed to the above passages of the Upanisads because those texts refer to the genus of all souls, i. e. to the fact that all souls are of the same nature29. On the contrary he says in the Puranas we find passages to the effect that Vamadeva has been liberated, Shuka has been liberated. If soul were one,. since the liberation of all would take place on the liberation of one the mention of diverse liberations would be self-contradictory 30.
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25. SS 1.146
26. SS 1.148
27. SS 1.149; SK 18; Gandhi's sentence needs some correction of the type here suggested.
28. Ani. 1.149
29. SS 1.154
30. SS 1.157
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