Bhagvana Mahavira

Author(s): Tulsi Acharya
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 55

Kaivalya (Omniscience) and the Bhagavan's. Sermons
wonder whether Bhagavan Mahavira was a possessor of Direct Knowledge. He was attracted towards him as if by a magnetic force. Bhagavan Mahāvīra then explained to him the nature of karma. The soul attracts subtle atoms by the exertion of its own inherent force. This attraction results in the atoms sticking to the soul. This present action constitutes spiritual exertion and the actions of the past constitute what is known as karma. Agnibhüti's mind as if got immersed in the direct perception of Truth by Bhagavan Mahāvīra. He also became a disciple of Bhagavan Mahāvīra along with his own disciples.
Indrabhuti and Agnibhuti were followed then, one by one, by other scholars also, and were all converted.
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Vāyubhūti was the third to come. Bhagavan Mahāvīra expounded to Vayubhūti the duality of the soul and the physical body. He said, "You are sceptical about the duality of soul and body. This is because you cannot know the subtle things by means of gross things. The human body is gross and material, whereas the soul is subtle and nonmaterial. If they were one and the same thing, there would be no need to treat them as separate. I find through extrasensory perception that the two are separate from each other. If the soul were not distinct from the body, I could not have seen it without the help of the senseorgans.
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Then Bhagavan Mahāvīra resolved the doubt of Vyakta by expounding that it was wrong to believe the soul to be mere transformation of the five elements which constitute the material universe.
Expounding the principle of the transmigration, he said to Sudharma, "Sudharma, you hold that the soul continues to remain in the same kind of species even in the next births. That is why you believe that a man will be reborn as a man and an animal as an animal. But, that is not correct.