CHAPTER CCIX.
On the Consciousness or Intuitive knowledge of Extraneous Existences.
Argument:—Reconciliation of the opposite results of virtuous and sinful acts, on one and same person at the same time.
Vasishtha continued saying:—The life of a person is dear and useful to him, as long as he lives and not afterwards; but hear me tell you the good of a man’s dying in some holy place, with a wish for future reward in his next life.
2. God has ordained certain virtues and merits to certain places, even from the beginning of his imaginary city of this world (as to all other things at their very beginning).
3. Whatever merit is assigned to any place, the same awaits on the soul of the person, after its release from bondage, by his performance of the acts of piety enjoined by the sástras.
4. Hence any great sin that is committed by any body anywhere, is either partly or wholly effaced by the good act of the person, according to comparative merit of the holy place, or the degree of absolution in the mind of the penitent sinner.
5. In any case of the insignificance of the sin, with regard to the greater sacerdotalism of the place; there the sinner is quite absolved from his guilt, and attains the object of his wish (in his future life).
6. But in case of the equality of the merits of penitence, with the holiness of the place; the penitent man receives two bodies in his next life, that is both a physical body and spiritual soul.
7. Such is the effect of the primeval guilt and merit of mankind, that they are endowed with double bodies, consisting of their physical frames and spiritual souls (the one maculate and the other immaculate) and such the divine soul even from before.
8. The principle is called Brahma in its sense of the whole, and as Brahmá—the totality of the living soul jíva; and also as aham or the ego, meaning any living soul in particular; and as he remains in any manner of the whole or part, so he manifests himself in his semblance of the world.