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JANUARY, 1975
The Tir
Man is his own redeemer. We are all potential Gods. thankaras used this world as a spring-board to
“...dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference."9
Once the soul is redeemed, there is no coming back :
“That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not...now beams on me Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.”10
God is a synthesis of all redeemed souls ; It is Paramātmā, the super-soul. It differs from other souls in that it is all-knowledge and secondly, it is free from the misery of births and deaths,—the eternal cycle of transmigration :
"The One remains, the many change and pass ; Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly."11
What is death in common parlance is but the shedding off of its mundane bondage by the soul and the realization of its true self :
“Thy dales and hills are folding from my view ; Swiftly I mount, upon wide-spreading pinions, Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions Full joy I feel, while thus I cleave the air."12
Such in brief, is the Jaina outlook on life. A corollary follows. In that too, the same Poets agree with us. If we deny God as the creator of this universe, the natural question is: “How did this cosmos come into being ?” The answer is another question. "Did the hen come first, or the egg. ?”—Nay, there is no beginning, there is eternity at both ends :
“The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end."'13
Shelley's Adonais. Ibid. Ibid. Keats' The Bard Speaks. Wordsworth's Defile of Gondo.
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