taphysics, to be
studied as one would study algebra. It presents to its disciples
an exhaustive statement of the forms of being in twenty five
categories, and declares, "He who knows the twenty five
principles, whatever order of life he may have entered, and
whether he wear braided hair, a top knot only, or be shaven, he is
liberated." "This discriminative wisdom releases forever from
worldly bondage."28 "The virtuous is born again in heaven, the
wicked is born again in hell; the fool wanders in error, the wise
man is set free." "By ignorance is bondage, by knowledge is
deliverance." "When Nature finds that soul has discovered that it
is to her the distress of migration is owing, she is put to shame
by the detection, and will suffer herself to be seen no more."29
"Through knowledge the sage is absorbed into Supreme Spirit."30
"The Supreme Spirit attracts to itself him who meditates upon it,
as the loadstone attracts the iron."31 "He who seeks to obtain a
knowledge of the Soul is gifted with it, the Soul rendering itself
conspicuous to him." "Man, having known that Nature which is
without a beginning or an end, is delivered from the grasp of
death." "Souls are absorbed in the Supreme Soul as the reflection
of the sun in water returns to him on the removal of the water."32

The thought underlying the last statement is that there is only
one Soul, every individual consciousness being but an illusory
semblance, and that the knowledge of this fact constitutes the
all coveted emancipation. As one diffusive breath passing through
the perforations of a flute is distinguished as the several notes
of the scale, so the Supreme Spirit is single, though, in
consequence of acts, it seems manifold. As every placid lakelet
holds an unreal image of the one real moon sailing above, so each
human soul is but a deceptive reflection of the one veritable
Soul, or God. It may be worth while to observe that Plotinus, as
is well known, taught the doctrine of the absolute identity of
each soul with the entire and indistinguishable entity of God:

"Though God extends beyond creation's rim, Yet every being holds
the whole of him."

It belongs to an unextended substance, an immateriality, to be
everywhere by totality, not by portions. If God be omnipresent, he
cannot be so dividedly, a part of him here and a part

28 Ibid. pp. 1, 16.

29 Ibid. pp. 48, 142, 174.

30 Vishnu Purana, p. 57.

31 Ibid. p. 651.

32 Rammohun Roy, Translations