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THE SUMMARY
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THE SOUL
The soul is the reality which possesses the faculty of knowing and perceiving, in which the sensations of pain and pleasure inhere and through which the volition functions. Modern experimental psychology has already discovered the electrical counterpart of the soul, called the Taijas-sarira. (Read pages 54-55). The soul has the potency of changing its size by contraction and expansion. It can occupy the smallest possible body of a bacteriophage or the biggest body of a whale fish. Although the soul substance is non-quantumistic in nature, one single soul can fill every iota of space in the whole universe under special circumstances. Since a body grows from a microscopical size in the mother's womb to its full proportions and contracts again, at the end of its earthly career, to re-incarnate into a new seed, it follows that the size of the soul cannot remain fixed. Modern science identifies life with protoplasm or the living cell and it is well-known that protoplasm possesses a remarkable property of contraction under external stimuli. Soul experiences pain, pleasure, life and death through the agency of karmic matter. This theory of transmigration of soul is an extraordinary conception, also supported by Hindu and Buddhist philosophers. According to the Jaina view all actions of embodied living beings, whether mental or physical, are followed by an influx of fine molecules of energy towards the soul, the latter constituting what is called kurmuna body. To use the modern language, the activities of mind and matter constitute a super-radio, with the quintillions of living cells sending out their individual waves to be tuned in by quadrillions of receiving sets in the brain. Influx of these waves is the influx of subtle karmic matter. Karmic matter, we can call the fourth state of matter, the other three being 'Solids', 'Liquids' and Gases'. Activity of a good kind attracts meritorious while activity of a bad kind attracts the opposite kind of karmic matter. The karmic body is responsible for dragging the soul from one physical body to another, and it keeps the soul bound to the confines of the universe owing to the gravitational forces operating on all sides. When karmic matter is shed off the soul by following the Path of Liberation, the latter, being the lightest substance, rises up to the top of the universe and rests there as Pure Effulgence Divine. It cannot travel further owing to the absence of luminiferous aether beyond, this aether being the
