I am The Soul Part 01

SR No.: 006790
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Tarulatabai Mahasati
Publisher: Shri Gujarati Shwetambar Sthanakwasi Jain Association
Total Pages: 468
Language: English, Hindi
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 429

I am the Soul
It is therefore, that the Sadguru says, 'You talk of believing atma to be the body because of your attachment from eternal time. Like the deer - mriga - in the forest, parched and thirsting for water - jal, struggles to locate it. The fierce summer sun is spouting fire. The burning rays of the sun falling on the earth, pass through the pockets of air in the sandy regions. Flowing air creates an impression of water. The thirsty deer runs after it believing it to be water, but the water keeps moving farther and farther away. It remains out of reach. That is mrigajal - mirage.
The appearance that body itself is atma has been created because the activity of the body has been presumed to be that of the atma. But just as the mrigajal is merely an illusion and not water, the body too is not the soul. Body is inanimate, soul is animate the characteristics of both are very different. There is not an iota of inanimate in the animate nor vice versa. They are different owing to their different characteristics. The soul with karma cannot remain without a body. As such there is a feeling of the support and the supported between the two. All things in the universe have a feeling of the support and the supported with the sky. The sky is the support and the substances remaining under it are the supported. Same is the way in which the body and dweller of the body - dehi - are related. Having offered a support to the dweller the body becomes the support and the dweller that is the atma becomes the supported. The substances under the sky are not like the sky but are altogether different. In the same way, the soul dwelling in the body is not in the form of the body but altogether different from it.
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The disciple had a doubt - whether the body itself is the atma - to which the Gurudev has offered clarification and explained that body and soul are different, that the body is not the soul and that the soul has an independent entity.
The other doubts raised by the disciple as regards the existence of the soul are now clarified.