Religion and Philosophy of the Jainas

SR No.: 001190
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Jain International Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1993
Total Pages: 266
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Ethics, & Principle
File Size: 13 MB

Page 94

SOUL
61
not related to their surroundings, there must be some reason for their beings obliged to live in those surrounding . but there must be a reason in the intelligence itself; it cann be in the material substance. We know that this is a faci, Decause intelligence cannot proceed from any thing which is purely material. No material substance has given any evidence of having possessed intelligence; it might have done so when there was life in it, but without this it has no intelligence'. That intelligence is, we are quite sure, influenced by material things. but it does not arise from the material things. Persons of sound intelligence take a large dose of some intoxicating drink and the intelligence will not work at all. Why should this material thing influence the immaterial, the soul ? The soul thinks that the body is itself and therefore anything which is done to the material self is supposed by the real self to be done to itself.
That is where the Christian scientist and the Jaina philosophy will agree; that if the soul thinks that the body is its real self, anything done to the body will be considered by the soul to be done to the soul, and therefore what happens to the body will be felt by the soul; but if the soul for a moment thinks that the body is not the self but altogether different and a stranger to the soul, for that reason no feeling of pain will exist; our attention is taken away in some other direction and we do not know what is passing before us. This shows that the self is something higher than the body. Still under ordinary circumstances the soul is influenced by the body, and therefore we are to study the laws of the body and soul so as to rise
1. This statement is worded somewhat loosely; for according to the Jaina, even
when occupied by soul the body does not come to possess intelligence; what it becomes then is an 'instrument of the intelligent activities undertaken by
soul'. (K.K.D) 2. 'Christian Science was a prevalent Western cult of Gandhi's days.
According to it, the physical bodies possess no real reality, the only real realities being the souls. Gandhi agrees with this view only to the extent that according to him 100 the physical body does not influence that soul which refuses to be influenced by this body but not to the extent of denying the very reality of the physical body. (K.K.D)