senses in their subtile forms) passes out of one body
for entering another. The Soul is bound by its
own former acts. Bound by its own acts done in
one state of existence, it attains to another state.
Indeed, it is led from one into another body by its
own acts which are very powerful in respect of their
consequences. How the owner of a human body, leaving
off his body, enters another, and then again into another,
how, indeed, the entire range of beings is the result
of their respective acts (of past and present lives),
I will presently tell you.’”
“Bhishma said, ’All immobile and mobile
beings, distributed into four classes, have been said
to be of unmanifest birth and unmanifest death.
Existing only in the unmanifest Soul, the Mind is said
to possess the attributes of the unmanifest.[719]
As a vast tree is ensconced within a small unblown
Aswattha flower and becomes observable only when it
comes out, even so birth takes place from what is
unmanifest. A piece of iron, which is inanimate,
runs towards a piece of loadstone. Similarly,
inclinations and propensities due to natural instincts,
and all else, run towards the Soul in a new life.[720]
Indeed, even as those propensities and possessions
born of Ignorance and Delusion, and inanimate in respect
of their nature, are united with Soul when reborn,
after the same manner, those other propensities and
aspirations of the Soul that have their gaze directed
towards Brahma become united with it, coming to it
directly from Brahma itself.[721] Neither earth, nor
sky, nor heaven, nor things, nor the vital breaths,
nor virtue and vice, nor anything else, existed before,
save the Chit-Soul. Nor have they any necessary
connection with even the Chit-Soul defiled by Ignorance.[722]
The Soul is eternal. It is indestructible.
It occurs in every creature. It is the cause of
the Mind. It is without attributes, This universe
that we perceive hath been declared (in the Vedas)
to be due to Ignorance or Delusion. The Soul’s
apprehensions of form, etc., are due to past desires.[723]
The Soul, when it becomes endued with those causes
(viz., desire), is led to the state of its being engaged
in acts. In consequence of that condition (for
those acts again produce desires to end in acts anew
and so on),—this vast wheel to existence
revolves, without beginning and without end.[724] The
Unmanifest, viz., the Understanding (with the
desires), is the nave of that wheel. The Manifest
(i.e., the body with the senses) constitutes its assemblage
of spokes, the perceptions and acts from its circumference.
Propelled by the quality of Rajas (Passion), the Soul
presides over it (witnessing its revolutions).
Like oilmen pressing oilseeds in their machine, the
consequences born of Ignorance, assailing the universe
(of creatures) which is moistened by Rajas, press
or grind it in that wheel. In that succession
of existences, the living creature, seized by the idea
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