Can the Soul Lose Its Individuality?


Question: Can the Soul Lose Its Individuality?

Can the soul, if he wishes, become void, not even entering into brahman effulgence, completely null with total loss of individuality?

I know its a foolish thing to think about it. But I just want to know whether God provides us our free choice. I mean if he doesn't offer that option, how can we call it a complete independence?

Please forgive me if you think I am offending God, Gurudeva. It's just that have this doubt that I wanted to clarify.

Oh, twice born please enlighten me.

Answer: Only in His Imagination

It is not possible for the soul to merge into nothingness because there is no such thing as nothingness. Nothingness is only a concept, and since even concepts are something, the concept "nothingness" is indeed also something. In other words even nothingness is not true nothingness.

If the soul is too much frustrated with existence and executes the required penances, he is allowed to attain a type of liberation known as sayujya mukti in which he no longer has the sense of individual existence. But because this is only an imagined, unnatural position he eventually falls down sayujya mukti and again becomes entangled in the cycle of birth and death.

Would we accuse a parent a being a tyrant for not allowing his child to kill himself? Of course not. So how we can accuse God of being a tyrant for not allowing us the option of non-existence? Thus it is a ludicrous idea to think that independence requires the freedom to annihilate one's existence. Real independence means the choice to love God or leave Him.

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