23 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. ii. p. 141.
teach that when, at the close of every great period, all other developed existences are rendered back to their primordial state, souls are excepted. These, once developed and delivered from the thraldom of their merit and demerit, will ever remain intimately united with Deity and clothed in the resplendent wisdom.24 Secondly, there are others and probably at the present time they include a large majority of the Brahmans who believe in the real being both of the Supreme Soul and of separate finite souls, conceiving the latter to be individualized parts of the former and their true destiny to consist in securing absorption into it. The relation of the soul to God, they maintain, is not that of ruled and ruler, but that of part and whole. "As gold is one substance still, however diversified as bracelets, tiaras, ear rings, or other things, so Vishnu is one and the same, although modified in the forms of gods, animals, and men. As the drops of water raised from the earth by the wind sink into the earth again when the wind subsides, so the variety of gods, men, and animals, which have been detached by the agitation of the qualities, are reunited, when the disturbance ceases, with the Eternal." 25 "The whole obtains its destruction in God, like bubbles in water." The Madhava sect believe that there is a personal All Soul distinct from the human soul. Their proofs are detailed in one of the Maha Upanishads.26 These two groups of sects, however, agree perfectly with the ancient orthodox Brahmans in accepting the fundamental dogma of a judicial metempsychosis, wherein each one is fastened by his acts and compelled to experience the uttermost consequences of his merit or demerit. They all coincide in one common aspiration as regards the highest end, namely, emancipation from the necessity of repeated births. The difference between the three is, that the one class of dissenters expect the fruition of that deliverance to be a finite personal immortality in heaven; the other interpret it as an unwalled absorption in the Over Soul, like a breath in the air; while the more orthodox believers regard it as the entire identity of the soul with the Infinite One.
Against the opinion that there is only one Soul for all bodies, as one string supports all the gems of a necklace, some Hindu philosophers argue that the plurality of souls is proved by the consideration that, if there were but one soul, then when any one was born, or died, or was lame, or deaf, or occupied, or idle, all would at once be born, die, be lame, deaf, occupied, or idle. But Professor Wilson says, "This doctrine of the multitudinous existence or individual incorporation of Soul clearly contradicts the Vedas. They affirm one only existent soul to be distributed in all beings. It is beheld collectively or dispersedly, like the reflection of the moon in still or troubled water. Soul, eternal, omnipresent, undisturbed, pure, one, is multiplied by the power of delusion, not of its own nature."27
All the Brahmanic sects unite in thinking that liberation from the net of births is to be obtained and the goal of their wishes to be reached by one means only; and that is knowledge, real wisdom, an adequate sight of the truth. Without this knowledge there is no possible emancipation; but there are three ways of seeking the needed knowledge.
24 Ibid. vol. iv. p. 15.
25 Vishnu Purana, p. 287.
26 Weber, Akademische Vorlesungen uber Indische Literaturgeschichte, s. 160.
27 Sankbya Karika, p. 70.
Some strive, by direct intellectual abstraction and effort, by metaphysical speculation, to grasp the true principles of being. Others try, by voluntary penance, self abnegation, and pain, to accumulate such a degree of merit, or to bring the soul into such a state of preparedness, as will compel the truth to reveal itself. And still others devote themselves to the worship of some chosen deity, by ritual acts and fervid contemplation, to obtain by his favor the needed wisdom. A few quotations may serve to illustrate the Brahmanic attempts at winning this one thing needful, the knowledge which yields exemption from all incarnate lives.
The Sankhya philosophy is a regular system of metaphysics, to be studied as one would study algebra. It presents to its disciples an exhaustive statement of the forms of being in twenty five categories, and declares, "He who knows the twenty five principles, whatever order of life he may have entered, and whether he wear braided hair, a top knot only, or be shaven, he is liberated." "This discriminative wisdom releases forever from worldly bondage."28 "The virtuous is born again in heaven, the wicked is born again in hell; the fool wanders in error, the wise man is set free." "By ignorance is bondage, by knowledge is deliverance." "When Nature finds that soul has discovered that it is to her the distress of migration is owing, she is put to shame by the detection, and will suffer herself to be seen no more."29 "Through knowledge the sage is absorbed into Supreme Spirit."30 "The Supreme Spirit attracts to itself him who meditates upon it, as the loadstone attracts the iron."31 "He who seeks to obtain a knowledge of the Soul is gifted with it, the Soul rendering itself conspicuous to him." "Man, having known that Nature which is without a beginning or an end, is delivered from the grasp of death." "Souls are absorbed in the Supreme Soul as the reflection of the sun in water returns to him on the removal of the water."32