Atma the Self

Author(s): Punyadarshanvijay
Publisher: Sanmarg Prakashan

Page 24

. ĀTMĀ
The Self....
3) Dharmastikāya: Ether Motion media, for Jiva and Pudgala, as water is to the swimming fish.
-
4) Adharmastikāya: Medium for Rest - Electromagnetic Rest.
5) Ākāśāstikāya: Space - Receptacle of things.
6) Kāla : Time - Real, Absolute and Apparent.
The Pudgala has shape and is visible while the remaining substances are invisible and without form.
The fusion of Soul with Matter results in various factors of individuality, cycle of birth and death, type of existence (Gati), continuous wanderings in the temporal ocean of life (Samsāra).
Reasons and Logic:
The Jaina Philosophy has pondered over every subject right from the atom to the universe and that Philosophy has stood the test of different schools of logic.
The facts discovered by science are never absolute and they are replaced by later researches and discoveries - "Essence of soul, who am I? where have I come from? and what is my goal, are most important and difficult questions of life. Every philosophy of the world is developed in response to these three poignant questions". A little thought convinces us that there are two answers to these very confronting questions, one is that you are eternal living entity in its essence, which moves in different forms and body according to deeds, good or bad and that your sole aim is the achievement of salvation - Mōkṣa. The other answer is that before and after "the present life of this earth you were and will be nothing". This brings us to the question whether the east is inclined towards the west or the west towards the east.
Plato (one of the first philosophers in the western part of the world) has observed that, "All the substances of the Universe are dialectical and so death after life and life after death is inevitable" (The History of Western Philosophy).