Gandharavada

Author(s): Esther A Solomon
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyasabha

Page 62

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'embodied' or as 'unembodied', it can be easily seen that these epithets can refer to only an existent entity; hence the extinction of the soul cannot be thought of.
There is a scriptural statement: "Jaramaryam vaitat sarvam yad agnihotram"-One must perform agnihotra as long as one lives. The rite of agnihotra is the occasion for the slaughter of creatures, hence there is some fault in it also. If one has to perform the agnihotra as long as one lives, there is no scope for anything that brings about apavarga or emancipation. Can this mean that there is nothing like mokṣa (emancipation)? No; there is a 'va' in the statement which indicates that man should perform the agnihotra as long as he lives and he should also perform activities leading to mokṣa.
Once a soul becomes emancipated, there is no question of its being bound again or leading a mundane life all over again. The karma-matter is for ever dissociated from the soul; even though the karma-matter may be existing where the soul exists, the free soul will not be bound again, for the causes of bondagethe activities of mind, speech, and body, and perverse attitudeare absent.
As soon as a soul becomes emancipated, it being light on account of the removal of karmic matter flies up to the farthest extremity of the loka (cosmos, inhabited universe) in a single time-point, even as the castor-seed shoots upwards when its outer covering or sheath breaks off. The emancipated soul does not go beyond this abode of the siddhas (perfect beings), for beyond it is aloka and the dharmastikaya (the principle of motion which has spatial existence) that helps motion does not exist there."
The reading in the Sata. Br. (12.4.1.1) is:-"Etad vai jaramaryam sattvam yad agnihotram, jaraya và hy eva'sman mucyate mṛty una va.'
*Those who regard the soul as all-pervading or ubiquitous have not to consider the question of the place of the soul's residence after emancipation, for the all-pervading soul has no place where to go. Among the theistic philosophers of the Vedanta, the Vaisnavaites believe that the emancipated soul
goes
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