Atma Dharma

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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tinguished from the remaining five substances by its special attribute of consciousness. Our bodies, bodily organs and limbs-hands, feet, heart, spleen and the like our passions, emotions, loves and hatreds, our thoughts and words, even the very organ of our thought, namely, mind, and its chief vehicle or instrument, the physical brain, all these are composed of unconscious matter, and are, for that reason, different from our real self whose peculiar characteristic is consciousness.
With respect to our infatuations* the soul is like a white crystal which reflects all colours, but is different from them. These modifications arise in the soul from its union with matter, because changes of function are inconceivable without the intervention of an external cause. In its own nature, the soul is the subject of pure perfect knowledge, and may be likened to a light that is absolutely pure and undefiled by any kind of
*Cf. There is no blood relationship between me and infatuation. The faculty which perceives and knows, that I am. Those who have comprehended the nature of pure spirit know this faculty to be distinct from infatuations."Samayasara, by Swami Kundkundâchârya.
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All these attributes, colour, attachment, aversion, and the like, should be deemed to be assciated with the soul like the adultration of milk with water; they are not the properties af the soul for the soul with its specific functions of knowing and perceiving, is separate from them."-Amrita Chandra.