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FOREWORD
41
of Buddhist skepticism and the Vedantic doctrine of absolutely changeless eternal soul substance. It is true that while one can describe the path of liberation, the state of the liberated soul is only a matter of experience. “Meditation,” Ma Usha Prem observes, “is not something that you do. It is, only when your doer has gone and you are totally relaxed, not doing anything, in a deep let-go, rest... there is meditation. Then meditation flowers. It is the flowering of your being. It has nothing to do with becoming. It is not an achievement, it is not an improvement; it is just being that which you already are, says Osho, the Zen master.”71
In the self-effacement and elimination of the ego sense, which is the basic premise and essential feature of self-surrender to the Supreme Being, as a principal way to achieve union with Him among the Hindus also, there is no denial of the Self, only surrender of ego.
The Jaina doctrine of anekant synthesizes the seeming differences between being and becoming, and between immanence and transcendence. In becoming, the Self gets rid of the impurities and deviations of the empirical or mundane Self, i.e. the passions, desires, likes and dislikes, attachment and aversion, etc. which are the result of the erroneous identification of the Self with the body, the senses and the conditioned mind, and regains the purity of its own being, the innate nature of its true Self.
The Self liberates itself from all the distortions and fetters and transcends all the weaknesses, limitations and deviations, thereby realizing the fullest development of its potentialities, which are inherent or immanent in it. As a result, the innate characteristics and qualities of the pure Self, the divinity or the spiritual magnificence and glory of the essentially self-luminous reality is, thus, actualized. In other words, in self-realization the self regains its own inherent properties or powers, attains perfection or Godhood and is established in its suarupa (the innate nature of its true Self).
Transcendence in Jainism signifies that the pure consciousness relinquishes or transcends the impure psychic dispositions associated with the empirical Self, i.e. the conditioned mind or the intentional consciousness, thereby realizing its own inherent purity and happiness, which is supersensuous, incomparable, infinite and indestructible. It is transcendence in immanence or inner transcendence. Dr. A. N.
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