________________
822
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
coming from without, and penetrating through the shell? Oh no! The chicken makes itself, and the force which carries out and perfects this work, which is complicated, well calculated, and designed beyond all expression, breaks through the shell as soon as it is ready, and now performs the outward actions of the chicken, under the name of will. It cannot do both at once; previously occupied with the perfecting of the organism, it had no care for without. But after it has completed the former, the latter appears, under the guidance of the brain and its feelers, the senses, as a tool prepared beforehand for this end, the service of which only begins when it grows up in self-consciousness as intellect, which is the lantern to the steps of the will, and also the supporter of the objective external world, however limited the horizon of this may be in the consciousness of a hen. But what the hen is now able to do in the external world, through the medium of this organ, is, as accomplished by means of something secondary, infinitely less important than what it did in its original form, for it made itself."
The transmigrating ego carries with it the entire load of its past karmas which account for the circumstances and conditions of its present incarnation, or 'life.' The material basis of these karmas, as already hinted at, is the subtle inner body called the kârmâna śarîra, which, along with the one known as the taijasa, is a constant companion of the soul in all its transmigratory wanderings. Both these bodies are destroyed at the moment of final emancipation, when the soul immediately rises up to the holy Siddha Sila as pure Spirit, and attains nirvana. The kârmâna sarira is the compound arising from the union, or fusion, of spirit and matter, and is subject to modifications of form and type from time to time. The taijasa is composed of electric, or magnetic matter, and is a necessary link between the outermost body and the karmána sarira.
The necessity for a link of this kind lies in the fact that its
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org