tman_and_moksa

SR No.: 020053
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University
Publication Year: 1965
Total Pages: 901
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 78

Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
46
Atman and Mokşa
the following manner : “Verily he, who is the doer is the elemental soul. The causer of action through the organs is the inner Person. Now, verily as a lump of iron, overcome by fire and beaten by workmen, passes over into a different form - so, assuredly, indeed, the elemental soul, overcome by the inner Person and beaten by the qualities, passes over into a different form."1 The universal Self is beyond these three qualities --- sattva, rajas and tamas-and so it is free; it does not whirl in the wheel of birth and death; actions good and bad, do not affect him. While the individual soul is the doer of actions and reaper of their fruits, is governed by the three qualities, is subject to afflictions and death. A similar parable occurs also in the Mundaka Upanişad which describes the two Selves, one, the higher and the other the empirical by means of two birds ----sitting on the same tree, one on a higher branch and the other on a lower -- the latter experiencing by turn sweet and bitter tastes of the fruits, while eating them, and the former sitting quiet, unruffled, without eating anything, a silent witness of the world. This also is a symbolic representation of the states of the universal and the empirical soul. The one is the transcendental Self, the other the empirical soul, moving on the wheel of earthly life. In fact, all the numerous individual souls are in their essence the same. They do not differ substantially. The inner Self or the indweller -- the cause and the
1 Ibid, 3/3, p. 419. a Mundaka Up. 3•1,2.
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