Dravyasamgraha

Author(s): Nemichandra Acharya, Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp

Page 50

Verse 10
with its own body which is physical and spatial. Atmā is considered to be a Kāya. But this Kāyatva would not make it physical. It is distinctly defined to be spiritual.
... Though the Atmā has continued to exist, and has an embodied existence from time immemorial, it is in its spiritual nature entirely distinct from its corporeal habitation. It puts on a body because of Karmas and thus it roams in the world of samsāra.
Chakravarti Nayanar, A., Acārya Kundakunda's Pañcāstikāya-Sāra, p. 24-25.
The soul is an expanding and contracting substance Jainism refers to the size of the soul. Although souls are not of any definite size, they contract and expand according to the size of the body in which they are incorporated for the time being. The soul is capable of adjusting its size to the physical body, as the lamp placed in a large or small room illuminates the whole space of the room. Nemichandra describes it as the phenomenal characteristic of the soul. From the noumenal point of view it is said to exist in innumerable Pradeśas.
Kalghatgi, T.G., Jaina View of Life, p. 55.
As regards its dimensions, the soul is an expanding and contracting substance, and has no fixed size of its own prior to the attainment of salvation. It is obvious that the soul cannot be smaller than its physical body, for in that case it will not be able to feel the bodily affections as its own. This will be readily agreed to if we take into consideration the proposition that pleasure and pain being affections of the ego it is impossible to feel either in a place which is not pervaded by the soul. If it be said that a mental message is received by the soul from the seat of the trouble, then the reply is that there will be no feeling of
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