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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Atman and Moksa
by those means (by strength, earnestness and right meditation), then his Self enters the home of Brahman."! It is stated in the Katha and the Mundaka Upanisad that “The Self cannot be gained by understanding nor by much learning nor by much hearing and preaching. He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained. This Self chooses him (his body) as his own."2 The Mundaka Upanisad, again, emphatically states that " By truthfulness, indeed, by penance, right knowledge and abstinence must that Self be gained; the Self whom spotless anchorites gain is pure and like a light within the body." 3 Regarding the same the Ka ha Upanişad says — “He who has perceived which is without sound, without touch, without form, without decay, without taste, eternal, without smell, without beginning, without end, the great and unchangeable, is freed from the jaws of death."4 All these passages speak about the eternal happiness and about the freedom from recurrence of births and deaths and their resulting miseries. It can be attained only if a person can experience everywhere, outside and inside him, the one, the Self, that is the essence of everything and which is the only Reality of the universe. Yājñavalkya says, “Even if one performs a great and holy work, but without knowing this, that work of his, merely perishes in the end."8 So also the Maitrāyani
1 Mundaka Up. 3.2.4. 2 Katha Up. 1.2.23 and Mundaka Up. 2.3. 3 Mundaka Up. 3.1.5. 4 Katha Up. 1.3.15. 6 Břh. Up. 1.4.15.
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