Yoga Philosophy

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi, Bhagu F Karbhari
Publisher: Devchand Lalbhai Pustakoddhar Fund

Page 50

PRACTICAL RULES FOR SOUL-CULTURE 31 the other. How can that soul live in matter when its attributes are of a different nature ? By our own experience we know that we are obliged to live in surroundings which are not congenial to us, which are not of our own nature. People feel that they are not related to their surroundings; there must be some reason for their being obliged to live in those surroundings, but there must be a reason in the intelligence itself ; it cannot be in the material substance. We know that this is a fact, because intelligence cannot proceed from anything which is purely material. No material substance has given any evidence of having possessed intelligence; it might have done so when there was life in it, as we are quite sure, influenced by material things; but it does not arise from material things ; let a person of sound intelligence take a large dose of some intoxicating drink and the intelligence will not work at all. Why should this material thing influ. ence the immaterial, the soul ? The soul thinks that the body is itself and therefore anything which is done to the material self is supposed by the real self to be done to itself. That is where the Christian scientists and the Jain philosophy will agree; that if the soul thinks that the body is its real self anything done to the body will be considered by the soul to be done to the soul, and therefore what happens to the body will be felt by the soul ; but if the soul for a moment thinks that the body is not the self, but altogether different and a stranger to the soul, for that reason no feeling of pain will exist ; our atten