Atma the Self

Author(s): Punyadarshanvijay
Publisher: Sanmarg Prakashan

Page 19

.... ATMA
The Self....
PREFACE
This is a small attempt to introduce readers to Jainism. A Christian devotee from West Germany had sent a few queries regarding Jainism. I was asked to prepare notes to explain. My previous contacts with missionaries and study of Old and New Testaments were useful. The notes ‘resulted in the form of a booklet 'Jainism a Glimpse'.
I am neither a writer nor a scholar and my study of Jainism is comparatively limited.
During regular visits by foreigners to pūjya Ācārya Srimad Vijaya Rāmacandra Sūrīśvaraji Mahārāja, I was given the opportunity since last few years to interpret in English the replies to visitor's queries. The response to Jainism a Glimpse' and visitor's quest with inquisitive feelings, had emboldened me to make a small contribution in the form of a treatise - Ātmā - the Self', in which some other subjects are also referred to.
A Jaina by birth, I knew practically nothing about Jainism. I spent three and half years in prison during India's freedom struggle, about twenty five years in 'National Village Development Programme' along with Gāmdhiji Pandita Nēharu and others and as honorary - member secretary, Khādi and Village Industries Commission, Government of India. I had to visit several foreign countries and most of India as part of my work, where I came across areas of heart-rending poverty, utter ignorance and deep superstitions.
I also got many opportunities to listen to discourses and lectures of very eminent religious preachers and preceptors of different religions and also of political leaders. I believed in one Supreme God and left everything to fate. My father and three brothers began life with a small business, led to industrial estates. Fate gave us all, and its ups and downs also.
It was fate which took me and kept me (during my prison days) in dark dungeon with solitary confinement, without any extra clothes for eighty-six days (against all international conventions) by the British Government. The unprecedented pains, sufferings and mental tortures which practically drove me crazy, even to the extent of contemplation of committing suicide. But
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