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FOREWORD
35
of pure consciousness. After discussing in detail the mystical significance of Jaina ethics, K.C. Sogani has pointed out how the human self emerging from the cave of passions rests in the abode of consciousness. The Bahiratman accepts everything as his own, the Artaratman negates all attachment in regard to external objects but the Paramatman transcends these qualities of acceptance and negation. The Self rises from the state of ignorance to one of spiritual evolution to achieve Siddhatra rising above all to a state of complete liberation.58 It is not possible to give, as Radhakrishnan says, a positive description of the liberated soul.59 It is a state of freedom from action and desire, a state of utter and absolute quiescence. Zimmer shows that in that state, the individuality, the masks, the formal personal features, are distilled away like the drops of rain that descend from the clear sky, tasteless and emasculate.60
J. Krishnamurti also opines that it is not possible to give a positive description of the liberated soul. He states:
That fullness which is beyond conceptualization is best described through negation. In that, we are nothing, nobody, no one. Therefore, upon transformation, there is the realization that nobody has changed, because there was nobody there to do the changing. The entire concept of transformation is fundamentally grounded in an escape from what-is to the what-should-be. It is a false self that thinks itself conditioned, and a false self that imagines a transformed state. When free from these illusions about the present conditioned self and the imagined transformed self, these false selves vanish, leaving behind no one.61
Liberation does not mean negation of the Self because in that case the questions as to liberation of whom and liberation from what will remain unanswered. The liberated soul is liberated of its impure psychic dispositions of the empirical Self or transcends the consciousness of the conditioned mind or intentional consciousness, which is tinged with desires, intentions, egoism, selfishness and having likes and dislikes, attachment and aversion, thereby regaining its pure consciousness which is the innate nature (starupa) and distinguishing characteristic of the Self.
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