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VI. MYSTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF JAINA ETHICS
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saying that the cognitive, conative and affective tendencies of the perfected mystic reveal their original manifestation in his supreme mystical experience, which is ineffable and transcends all the similies of the world.1
ARAHANTA AS THE CATEGORY OF 'HOLY': The element of ineffability indicates that the essence of Arhat cannot be completely exhausted in conceptual and rational terms. It points the luminous aspect of Arhat which transcends or eludes comprehension in rational or ethical terms. We may in other words say that the Arhat is the 'wholly other'.3 By this, "that aspect of Deity, the mysterious overplus surpassing all that can be clearly understood and appraised, is asserted emphatically against any excessive anthropocentric tendency to scale down the sacred and Holy to the measure of our human reason." It is on account of this element that the mind resorts to purely negative expressions. Though the expressions are negative, what they point out is something positive, which can only be within the reach of a direct and living experience. Thus the glory of spiritual life is inexplicable and beyond the reach of the Vedas, the Šāstras and the senses, and can only be experienced through pure meditation or contemplation. "In eternal divinity, there is no devotional control of breath, no object of meditation, no mystical diagram, no miraculous spell, and no charmed circle. It will not be inconsistent if it is averred that the category of Arhat is the category of the holy, a category of interpretation and valuation." In other words, in the religious consciousness of the transcendent mystic there is "intimate interpenetration of the non-rational with the rational elements like the interweaving of warp and woof," ineffability being the non-rational element and the evaporation of bodily urges, the emergence of omniscience, obtainment of infinite power, abolition of all fear, enjoyment of illimitable joy, resolution of all doubts, consummation of virtues etc., being the rational elements.
SAMUDGHĀTA IN SAYOGA KEVALĪ GUŅASTHĀNA: The acme of the ladder, the fourteenth stage of absolute motionlessness, the Ayoga Kevalī Gunasthāna is arrived at when the perfected mystic gets over the vibratory activities of body and speech by resorting to the two types of Sukla Dhyāna when the small duration of longevity-determining Karma remains. Though the self has annulled the four Ghāti Karmas, yet the four Aghāti Karmas, namely, feeling-producing (vedanīya), Longevity deter
1 Jñānā. LXII. 76, 77, 78. 2 Idea of the Holy. pp. 5-7. 3 Idea of the Holy. p. 25. 4 Idea of the Holy, Preface. XVIII. Pp. 23. Pp. Intro. Upadhye. 10.
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