Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/51

 to the call of his higher or psychiq self. Tli'e one is organic, the other is psyC^ic The one chains him down to the phenomenal, and is" governed by the laws of growth and decay ; the other opens on the region of absolute realities where growth and decay have no room to be. Growth is not the only condition of life. Man may exist without food (i)or respiration, only if he can manage to dive deep into the realities within himself. Between these two sets of apparatus there is the Jivatma, which, by its own peculiar energy (the will-force), can operate in phenomenal or organic pl?,in, or recede from thence into the psychic one, thus being in contact with the world of the senses' and the one that is beyond the darkness of death. Death, in fact, is the grand usherer to life, which is only the rise of the curtain over the life's drama, all equipments for which are made in the green room of death.

A man can not propagate at will. No amount of willing on the part of the parent-animal can help him in creating progeny. The self of the child, who is about to come into life, chooses its own parents, according to the dynamics of its own acts or Karma, from the region of the lunar Pitris or quiescent life, if it be warrantable to use such an expres- sion (2). The self of the would-be child mixes with the self of its human father, and hovers over the reproductive cells of the latter's organism, and regulates the intensity of its father's sexual desire, according to the nature of the sex, determined necessary for the fruition of the purposes of its advent into the world. A greater intensity of its father's desires ensures the preponderance of tile Pitrika Shakti (katabolism) in the impregnated ovum, which

(1) Skanda PurSnam quoted by Shridhara SvSmi in his commentaries on the Vishnu Purdnam. Ch. VI. V. i6. ,

(2) Shruti.