Early Writings — Page 54
54 THE come and go from the earth, but what sort of a boulder is blocking their way to the abode of those who have already obtained salva- tion. If God can cause all the souls to die or be born, why is He unable to grant them salvation? While He can change their con- dition in one respect, why is He unable to bring about a change in their condition in the other respect? Is it impossible for God to declare all of them to have obtained salvation, just as He has, until now, declared them to be deprived of salvation? For all such entities to which the absence of a certain characteristic can be attributed, may be characterised with an attribute in the affirm- ative sense as well. Moreover, it should also be clear that the proposition that all souls which exist at present can obtain salvation is not under dis- cussion here because the predicate of this proposition-salvation for all-is debatable like the particular of a general issue. What is actually being discussed here is a universal concept. In other words, my discussion on the issue at hand is from the aspect of totality; that is, whether or not, in accordance with the belief of the Arya Samaj, all souls that exist at present, which are yet to obtain salvation, are subject to a universal occurrence be it salva- tion or some other phenomenon. In this respect, I would like to thank the people of the Arya Samaj, for they have on their own acknowledged that in certain circumstances, a universal condition does extend over the souls as a collective whole, just as the state of death or birth can overtake all souls existing at a given time. Bawa Sahib should now give a just verdict and explain that while he acknowledges that a common state in two cases can affect all existing souls in their entirety, why does he deny the possibility of their experiencing a third state-the state of salvation for all?