The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future LifeAlger, William Rounseville
Religion
The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life
Alger, William Rounseville
Future life -- Christianity -- Bibliography; Future life -- Christianity -- History of doctrines
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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