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 93

Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
The Upanişads
Soul of the individual, that is subjected to pleasures and pains and thus to rebirth, is regarded as the eternal Self and because of the transiency of pleasurable experiences of the individual soul, the individual now and then has to suffer from disappointments. Not realising his true nature as the Higher Self, the individual falls now and then into infatuation and thus finds life miserable and bitter. By making proper discrimination between the two, he can make himself free from such sorrows of life. Paul Deussen makes a clearcut distinction between these two souls -- the Universal and the individual, the transcendental and the empirical, the higher and the lower-in the following manner --"The former is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent; the latter are limited in wisdom, power and capacity for movement. The former is neither active nor passive, and is therefore free from the very beginning; the latter are active and receptive and are therefore entangled in the eternal round of Saṁsāra, and stand in need of deliverance. Yet the individual ātmas are not properly distinct from the supreme ātman. Each of them is in full and complete measure the Supreme ātman himself, as he manifests himself though his real nature concealed by the Upādhis (manas, indriyas, etc.). These Upādhis are unable to change his real nature, as little as the purity of the rock crystal is destroyed by the red colour with which it is externally smeared. Rather, it is solely avidyā, ignorance, which imposes the upādhis on the Supreme ātman.” I “It is the atman
1 Deussen Paul : The Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 257,
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