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54
I am the Soul The external attractions are quick to draw you into their net. The Jiva gets enamoured instantaneously. These days you just have to step out and there are attractions aplenty. Whichever way you look there are elements to encourage all your senses and passions. You are charmed into seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling or touching something or the other. The allurement is unlimited, and how long does it take the Jiva to get enticed? Its instantaneous, it has nothing to do with age or comprehension.
When these passions, these elements entice you, don't you forget your self? “Who am I? How am I? Where am I? What is right? What is wrong?” do these thoughts occur at all. No, they don't. You get infatuated, engrossed in attempts to acquire and enjoy the objects that attract you. Just stop to ponder, whether what is happening is proper.
Vairagya will not appear unless you know the essence lying within you, unless an unflinching belief awakens in you that detachment - Vairagya can arise only with the firm thought, a strong conviction that there are powerful attractions within myself, whatever is to be believed, enjoyed, experienced is all within myself and that it cannot be had from any outside object.
From the very day of the birth, there are attractions beckoning you. As the age advances these attractions increase at such a pace that it is impossible for one person to get to enjoy all of them. What really happens is this lone Jiva has a limited time and unlimited attractions. How much time do you think you have come with? A hundred years at best? No way, the ones who reach hundred and hundred-plus get listed in the Guinness Book. I don't think we could make it to that list. We have come with a limited life-span of perhaps fifty, sixty or eighty years, in which little time we have to taste the pleasure of all the things in this world. Could we do it? No! What then? You realise it cannot be done, yet the desire remains. Then do we have to leave without enjoying? Yes, so it is. The things will lie here while we go away. Where to, if I may ask? Simply nowhere. In our typical Kathiawadi vernacular, it is termed as “getting back’. If
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| SR No. | 006790 |
| Book Title | I am The Soul Part 01 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Tarulatabai Mahasati |
| Publisher | Shri Gujarati Shwetambar Sthanakwasi Jain Association |
| Publication Year | |
| Total Pages | 468 |
| Language | English, Hindi |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 19 MB |