Atma Siddhi

Author(s): Shrimad Rajchandra, J L Jaini
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram

Page 43

14
ATMA-SIDDHI
for these ideals is a wasteful whim, or fleeting fancy. the aesthetic sense suggests that we carry on our good motives and instincts from birth to birth, till going on from higher to still higher and higher point of view and action we achieve the highest ideal of the Soul.
Mr. Uttamchand's doubt: If the soul is eternal it must remember its past incarnation.
(1) Memory is an aspect of knowledge, which is a peculiar attribute of the Soul. If all the knowledge is available to the soul, it can remember all its own and everyone else's past as well as see into its own and all other's future. But this knowledge is obscured by the Karmic matter of passion, sins, sorrows, frailties, and follies of the worldly soul. Our delusion-tossed, passion-saturated humanity vibrates day and night ceaselessly in a vicious whirl of ignorance and error. This, instead of removing or thinning the knowledge-obscuring veil, fixes it and thickens it still more.
(2) We forget most things of our babyhood, childhood, and of boyhood and youth and manhood also in old age. What wonder, if we forget matters of our past lives?
(3) From incarnation to incarnation the soul takes on with it only its sheath of Karmas