ear of Brahma; a hundred such years
measure his whole life. Then a complete destruction of all things
takes place, every thing merging into the Absolute One, until he
shall rouse himself renewedly to manifest his energies.17 Although
created beings who have not obtained emancipation are destroyed in
their individual forms at the periods of the general dissolution,
yet, being affected by the good or evil acts of former existence,
they are never exempted from their consequences, and when Brahma
creates the world anew they are the progeny of his will, in the
fourfold condition of gods, men, animals, and inanimate things.18
And Buddhism embodies virtually the same doctrine, declaring "the
whole universe of sakwalas to be subject alternately to
destruction and renovation, in a series of revolutions to which
neither beginning nor end can be discovered."

What is the Brahmanic method of salvation, or secret of
emancipation? Rightly apprehended in the depth and purity of the
real doctrine, it is this. There is in reality but ONE SOUL: every
thing else is error, illusion, misery. Whoever acquires the
knowledge of this truth by personal perception is thereby
liberated. He has won the absolute perfection of the unlimited
Godhead, and shall never be born again. "Whosoever views the
Supreme Soul as manifold, dies death after death." God is
formless, but seems to assume form; as moonlight, impinging upon
various objects, appears crooked or straight.19 Bharata says to
the king of Sauriva, "The great end of all is not union of self
with the Supreme Soul, because one substance cannot become
another. The true wisdom, the genuine aim of all, is to know that
Soul is one, uniform, perfect, exempt from birth, omnipresent,
undecaying, made of true knowledge, dissociated with
unrealities."20 "It is ignorance alone which enables Maya to
impress the mind with a sense of individuality; for as soon as
that is dispelled it is known that severalty exists not, and that
there is nothing but one undivided Whole." 21 The Brahmanic
scriptures say, "The Eternal Deity consists of true knowledge."
"Brahma that is Supreme is produced of reflection."22 The logic
runs thus. There is only One Soul, the absolute God. All beside is
empty deception. That One Soul consists of true knowledge. Whoever
attains to true knowledge, therefore, is absolute God, forever
freed from the sphere of semblances.

The foregoing exposition is philosophical and scriptural
Brahm