Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/411

Rh not attained by the labours and merits of a single life and death.

No man now lives for the first time. He has lived in former states, and in other forms, ever since the present race of beings first sprang by the will of Brahm into existence. He may have lived in connection with ten thousand bodies as man, beast, bird, fish, and tree; and he will live, age after age, born again, and again, and again, until, in successive transmigrations, he shall have wiped away every stain from his soul by religious penances and good works, or by pains and sufferings. Though, by their merit, these happy souls ascend to heaven, when their store of merit is exhausted, they return again, until, by unwonted holiness, they are absorbed in God, or at the end of the present dispensation, with all things spiritual and material, they sink into the being from whom they emanated.

This period of existence is called a day of Brahma, the name of Brahm in the state of creative energy; it lasts for the moderate period of two thousand one hundred and sixty millions of years! At the end of this vast lapse of time, all things are consumed by fire, or relapse into the creator, and Brahma, the