Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s35.2

v2.c26.s35.2

Only the knower of truth attains eternal life as distinct from survival, which is the lot of every other soul.³ Until eternal life is gained, our lives are bound up with saṃsāra, or the weary wheel of endless becoming. Saṃsāra is the expression of the time process, and the jīvas are guaranteed future existence in this endless circuit, until they rise from time to eternal life by means of spiritual insight. The presence of the eternal shows itself in time as endless continuance. In the well-known words of Plato’s Timaeus, “Time is the moving image of eternity.” No new arguments are advanced by Śaṃkara to prove the truth of future life. It is assumed that, when the physical body is annihilated, there is left behind a seed which brings forth a new organism according to its kind. Śaṃkara repudiates the materialist view that the individual soul is just the body, and with the dissolution of the latter, the soul perishes.⁴ The soul is independent of the body, and its identity makes possible recollection etc.¹ Though our bodies may be shattered to dust, still there is something in us which survives; and it is this which determines our future life. The knowledge we have gained, the character we have formed will pursue us into other lives.² The moral and the pious rise, while the immoral and impious sink in the scale. The nature of the future life depends on the moral quality of the past life. Birth and death merely refer to the union of the individual soul with body and separation from it.³