Dravyasamgraha

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

Page 51

Dravyasamgraha
pleasure or pain on such an assumption; for just as it is impossible for a man to experience the actual sensation of burning and physical pain on the receipt of a message that his house is on fire, however much he might be distressed by the piece of information mentally, in the same way and precisely for the same reason it is not possible for the soul to experience pleasure or pain in a place where it is not. And, lastly, even if it be assumed that physical pain could be caused by the message, then the feeling would be confined to the substance of the soul itself, and thus to the cavity of the heart or wherever else the soul might be located, but not at the seat of the trouble. Actual experience, however, demonstrates only too clearly that the feeling of pain is not confined to any particular locality in the organism, but may be experienced all over the body. This unmistakably proves the pervasion of the whole body by the soul...
...Now, since the body is not constant, but a thing which grows from small dimensions, it follows that the soul cannot have a permanent size of its own so long as it is involved in transmigration. This amounts to saying that the soul is an expanding and contracting substance; it begins from a microscopical size in the female womb and goes on expanding with its body till it attains its full proportions. Finally, that is, at the end of each earthly life, it is contracted again into the seed of the next incarnation to undergo the expanding process once more. Thus does the jīva continue to expand and contract in its different bodies, in the course of transmigration, till nirvāņa be reached.
Jain, Champat Rai, The Key of Knowledge, p. 499, 501.
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