nature. As such, the impressions or ideas which we now have, together
with the powers which we possess, will not be destroyed but will
remain with us in some form or other. Our bodies may change, but the
powers, Karma, Samskaras or impressions and the materials which
manufactured our bodies must remain in us in an unmanifested
form. They will never be destroyed. Again science tells us that that
which remains in an unmanifested or potential state must at some time
or other be manifested in a kinetic or actual form. Therefore we shall
get other bodies, sooner or later. It is for this reason said in the
"Bhagavad Gita": "Birth must be followed by death and death must be
followed by birth." Such a continuously recurring series of births and
deaths each germ of life must go through. Another consideration is
that the beginning, ending and continuing are conceptions of the human
mind; their significance depends entirely upon our conception of
time. But we all know that time has no absolute existence. It is
merely a form of our knowledge of our own existence in relation to
that of nature. The conception of time vanishes at the sleep of
death, just as it does every night when we are in sound sleep. Death
resembles the state of our sound sleep. The soul wakes up from the
sleep of death just in the same manner as the insects awake in spring
after sleeping the long and rigid winter-sleep, as a chrysalis in the
bed of a cocoon spun by itself in autumn. Nature teaches us the great
lesson of rebirth and the similarity between sleep and death by the
rejuvenation of the chrysalis in the spring. After death the soul
wakes up and puts on or manufactures the garment of a new body, just
in the same manner as we put on new clothes after throwing away the
old and worn-out ones. Thus the soul continues to manifest itself over
and over again either on the human or any other plane of existence,
being bound by the Law of Karma or of Cause and Sequence.