Faith Knowledge and Conduct

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 97

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FAITH KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
state of agitation under the influence of matter. Would it not be silly and senseless, then, to say that such a soul takes no part whatsoever in the process of organising its own body? There is nothing that is so intimately associated with the body as the soul that inhabits it. The connection is so intimate that the soul cannot even turn a hair's breadth in the body. Why should not, then, the formation of the body be influenced materially by the presence and the activities of the soul? Engaged during life in seeking gratification with their specific objects, the soul's impulses would now, that the outer body is discarded off for a time, operate directly on the material of which the bodily organs and limbs are made, and assist in moulding it into suitable forms. We shall thus have to trace all bodily modifications to the individual will itself in the first instance, because it is the repository of its impulses and character !
The body that is made has but two things in common with the past life of its immortal owner. One of them is the soul that is embodied in it, and the other is the bundle of impulses that it (the soul) has brought with itself, in the form of will. The old nervous associations and all else that pertained to the previous life is now gone for good. It may not even have a central mental equipment if the modified impulses which it has brought over from the past do not admit of its being made. The things that it could recall readily then