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destroyed?*[1] In the universal life, I maintain, that not one single atom can be lost.†[2]
Creation is infinite, with an endless capacity for growth and development. But if only the law of Efflux were operative there could be no improvement. Like produces Like, and although there might be an endless procession of variations—they would be but a mere repetition of the series of like to like again, and no improvement in the forms evolved from the parent stock.‡[3] But with the Law of Influx in operation, the forms are respective of new and higher qualities, which when evolved produce new and living forms of a higher and more interior order. It is only the recognition of this that can account for the development and manifestation of new forms of life of all kinds. To produce these, it must be evident that the germs of this new order of life were begotten from above
- ↑ * "A part of God!" Before we venture to talk of a part, we ought to make sure of the existence of the whole; or at least learn to know something more than we do of the Essence of that "God" people are so freely discussing about. The Adwaita philosophy teaches to believe in one univarsal Principle it calls Parabrabm and to eschew idols. Hence it rejects the idea of a personal God, whether called by the latter name or that of ONE ATOM the Father and Creator of all other atoms.—T. S. R.
- ↑ † "Atom lost?" No atom is ever lost but atoms combine in transitory groups which are entities, which are atomic congeries. So that if one personality is "annihilated," this is but a breaking up of an atomic group, and the freed atoms are drawn into new combinations—the 6th and the 7th principles being of course excluded—T. S. R.
- ↑ ‡ "Creation infinite." For "creation" read universe, and then the "endless capacity for growth and development" would fit in better, and there would be no contradiction to comment upon. As here written it reads like a theological paradox. For if the whole creation is "infinite" and there is still in it "an endless capacity for growth and development," then it becomes the antithesis of "creation". And if the writer means that cosmic matter was created and infused with a law of "growth and development," then cosmic matter must have been created out of nothing which is scientifically absurd. "Efflux" and "Influx" sound here like words without meaning. It is Influx that brings into being everything, and it is Efflux that changes conditions and obliterates all temporary forms, to evolve out of them the one Eternal Reality.—T. S. R.
