The Dhaarmik Traditions - Indic Studies Foundation

The fruit that one obtains of acts consists of pleasure and pain, of existence and nonexistence.
By knowledge, one attains to that where there is no occasion for grief;
where one becomes freed from both birth and death; where one is not subject to
decrepitude; where one transcends the state of conscious existence. By knowledge,
one attains to Brahman, which is Supreme, Unman fest, immutable, ever-existent,
imperceptible, above the reach of pain, immortal, and transcending destruction; where
all become freed from the influence of all pairs of opposites (like pleasure and pain,
heat and cold, insults and compliments, happiness and unhappiness etc., where all
become freed also of wish or purpose.
Reaching that stage, they cast equal eyes on everything, become universal friends and
devoted to the good of all creatures. There is a wide gulf, O son, between one devoted
to knowledge and one devoted to acts. Know that the man of knowledge, without
undergoing destruction, remains existent forever like the moon on the last day of the
dark fortnight existing in a subtle (but undestroyed) form.
As regards the man devoted to acts, his nature may be inferred from beholding the
newborn moon, which appears like a bent thread in the firmament (subject to growth
and decay). That person of acts takes rebirth with a body with eleven entities for its
ingredients, that are the results of modification, and with a subtle form that represents
a total of six and ten. The deity who takes refuge in that (material) form, like a drop of
water on a lotus leaf, should be known as Kshetrajna (Soul), which is Eternal, and
which succeeds by Yoga in transcending both the mind and the knowledge.
[Note: The soul resides in the body without partaking of any of the attributes of the
body. It is, therefore, likened to a drop of water on a lotus leaf, which, though on the
leaf, is not yet attached to it, in so much that it may go off without at all soaking or
drenching any part of the leaf.]
Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva are the attributes of the knowledge. The knowledge is the
attribute of the individual soul residing within the body. The individual soul, in its turn,
comes from the Supreme Soul. The body with the soul is said to be the attribute of jiva
(embodied soul). It is jiva that acts and cause all bodies to live.
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Of knowledge there is no end
From The Mahabharata
Aswamedha Parva, Section XLIV
Translated by Sri Kisari Mohan Ganguli
80