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EXAMINATION OF THE PERSON OF SUPER-NORMAL VISION'. 1479
without a second and so forth, not in any other form; as there would be incongruities as before.
From all this it follows that the Defects and Adictions are not properties of living beings.
If the mere fact of the Afflictions being produced in the living beings loads to the assumption that they constitute the nature of these beings, then there could be no possibility of getting rid of them, because there would be nothing definite and absoluto regarding them. For instance, the notion of
Serpent' is produced in the Rope, and yet it is set aside by the true Cognition when it appears.
Nor is the means of destroying the Afflictions impossible ; because the means is always possible in the shape of the repeated Cognition of the character contrary to the cause of the Afflictions. For instance, those Afflictions, the repeated Cognition of the character contrary to which is quite possible, are capable of having their Chain entirely cut off ; as in the case of the Vrihi and other corns ;-to this same category belong Love, Hatred and the rest ; hence the means of their destruction is quite possible.
Nor is it right that there can be no knowledge of these Means ; because the knowledge of the cause of the Afflictions themselves provides the clear idea of what is hostile to them, in the form of the thing having a form contrary to those. And it has been already shown that it is the idea of No-soul that envisages a form hostile to the Afflictions and destroys them.
Nor again is the upward trend rigidly fixed, as in jumping, because what is generated by each preceding repetition becomes observed in its very nature and hence indestructible, and as such it goes on producing fresh peculiarities in the subsequent efforts; and the reason for this lies in the fact that the substratum is a fixed one. Wisdom and the rest also are produced out of previous homogeneous seeds; not so jumping, etc. (?)-as is going to be explained later on.
Nor is another birth impossible ; because it has been proved that the present life is an effect of the previous birth.
Nor is it possible for the Defects to come up again,-like the solidity of Copper and other metals. Because when their contrary, in the shape of the idea of No-soul', has become totally absorbed, it can never cease. In the case of the solidity of Copper and other metals on the other hand, its contrary consists in Fire; and as this can be there only occasionally, the solidity is there only when the Fire is not there ; so that when the Fire disappears, it is only natural that the solidity should re-appear. The same cannot be the case with Impurities (Defects); even on the ceasing of the Path', the reappearance of the Defects does not always follow; as such a possibility would be annulled by the instance of Ashes. That is to say, after the Wood has been reduced to ashes by contact with Fire,-even if the Fire is removed, there is no reappearance of the Wood; so also in the case of the Defects. Hence your argument is inconclusive.
Then again, being adventitious, the Defects, from the very outset, are inofficient; how then could they have the capacity to set aside the Soullessness that has become ontirely absorbed ? Certainly the nature of
