But what is independent? Not our body, for it depends upon outward conditions; nor our mind, because the thoughts of which it is composed are caused. It is our soul. The Vedas say the whole world is a mixture of independence and dependence, of freedom and slavery, but through it all shines the soul independent, immortal, pure, perfect, holy. For if it is independent, it cannot perish, as death is but a change, and depends upon conditions; if independent, it must be perfect,for imperfection is again but a condition, and therefore dependent. And this immortal and perfect soul must be the same in the highest God as well as in the humblest man, the difference between them being only in the degree in which this soul manifests itself.

But why should the soul take to itself a body? For the same reason that I take a looking - glass -- to see myself. Thus,in the body,the soul is reflected. The soul is God, and every human being has a perfect divinity within himself,and each one must show his divinity sooner or later. If I am in a dark room, no amount of protestation will make it any brighter -- i must light a match. Just so,no amount of grumbling and wailing will make our imperfect body more perfect. But the Vedanta teaches --call forth your soul, show your divinity. Teach your children that they are divine, that religion is a positive something and not a negative nonsense; that it is not subjection to groans when under oppression, but expansion and manifestation.

Every religion has it that man's present and future are modified by the past,and that the present is but the effect of the past. How is it,then,that every child is born with an experience that cannot be accounted for by hereditary transmission? How is it that one is born of good parents, receives a good education and becomes a good man, while another comes from besotted parents and ends on the gallows? How do you explain this inequality without implicating God? Why should a merciful Father set His child in such conditions which must bring forth misery? It is no explanation to say God will make amends later on -- god has no blood - money. Then,too, what becomes of my liberty, if this be my first birth? Coming into this world without the experience of a former life, my independence would be gone,for my path would be marked out by the experience of others. If I cannot be the maker of my own fortune,then I am not free. I take upon myself the blame for the misery of this existence,and say I will unmake the evil I have done in another existence. This,then, is our philosophy of the migration of the soul. We come into this life with the experience of another,and the fortune or misfortune of this existence is the result of our acts in a former existence, always becoming better, till at last perfection is reached.

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