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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
554
Ātman and Moksa
(even the body) can survive when the knowledge of the Brahman dawns. He says therefore—“.... that Release, which consists in the cessation of Plurality, cannot take place as long as a man lives."'! Liberation to him is the final attainment of an unbreaking-fellowship with the Infinite and a likeness with Brahman in Being and knowledge. As Mahendranath Sircar says the individual soul can draw the constituent matter of the form that it may assume at its will after becoming free from s'uddha sattva and visualising itself. It is visualisation but not materialisation. If it is a form, it is immaterial, but none the less real. It is also an expression of spiritual being and consciousness. Rāmānuja does not put a limit to spontaneous expression in spiritual life. It is a life of free expansion and free expression, beyond the calculation of human reason and intellect.3
This is the idea of Moksa in the Vis'istādvaita of Rāmānuja. Rāmānuja seems to depart from the earlier systems like Buddhism, Cārvākism, Sankhya, Pūrva Mimāṁsā in holding that the state of Moksa is not only a negative one consisting in the absence of pain, suffering and other conscious experiences; it is not also like the Mokşa of Samkara, according
1 Ramanuja-Com. on Vedanta Sūtras. Tr. Thibaut, 1.1.1, p. 187.
अतः सकलभेदनिवृत्तिरूपा मुक्तिः न जीवतः संभवति । 2 Ibid. 4.4.4. eferroqqaat: sa THA: स्वरूपं तत्समता इति ।
3 Sircar Mahendranath : Comparative Studies in Vedantism. p. 280.
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