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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
The Upanişads
shadow, a person in dream, a body or any such thing. The Self is the bodiless, incorporeal, subtle, immortal, conscious principle which has its own category; and hence it can never be understood in terms of any non-selfish or unspiritual thing.
There is no particular and one single version of the size of the Ātman. There are various views expressed in the different Upanişads about the size of the Ātman. It is said in the Chandogya Upanişad, "My Soul in the heart is smaller than a grain of rice or barley, or a mustard or a canary seed : and yet my soul, which is pent up in the heart, is greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than the heaven, greater than all these worlds." Still subtler than this, is the self that is described in the śve'tas'vatara Upanisad, as a hundredth part of the extremity of a hair divided into a hundred infinitesimal parts, or as still subtler than this size is described in the same Upanişad as oil in the sesame seed, ghee in the cream and fire in the fire-sticks. Thus, here the Self if described as the finest and subtlest element immanent in the things; it has only metaphysical existence and not a physical and perceptible magnitude. Then gradually the size seems to have increased from a mustard seed to a thumb (S1Y2h17). The Śve'tas'vatara Upanisad further holds that this inner Self is only of the size of thumb and is pent up
1 Ch. Up. 3.4.3. . S'vét. Up. 5.8.9. 3 Ibid. 1.1.16. 4
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For Private And Personal
| SR No. | 020053 |
| Book Title | tman_and_moksa |
| 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 |