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Gandhi's Teachers : Rajchandra Ravjibhai Mehta
One who truly is beyond body while living in the body, I offer my innumerable, three-fold (with speech, body, and mind) salutations to him.
Overview and Comments
About The Work The poetic talents of Rajchandra were immense and he wrote from his inner experience. One can easily see the preciseness of detail in his writings and lucidity in his expression and composition. In one year's time, Rajchandra rendered the whole of Ramayana and Mahabharta in Gujarati verse form and wrote/composed many other religious writings during his lifetime. These works inspired the soul-seekers and served as guiding light for them. Atma-Siddhi is one example of such inspirational works."
Lord Krishna was concerned about the state of dharma in the world about five thousand years ago and felt compelled to reveal to Arjuna and others the right path for suitable living and soul-liberation when he spoke Bhagavad-Gita. Rajchandra, likewise, was pained to see that wrong beliefs, wrong knowledge, and wrong conduct? were spreading in society during his lifetime and became cominon in contradiction with Jain principles. On the one hand he saw dry philosophers and theologians, who knew what was right for soul-liberation but did not practice the prescribed virtues and did not follow Jain path. On the other hand he was concerned about the mere ritualists, who were interested in religious rites and took chaff for the grains. Both of these groups suffered from deep delusions and led others also on to the path to untruth. It is for the benefit of such dry philosopher, theologians, and ritualists that the work Atma-Siddhi was offered.
The central theme in the work is that there is a soul or self, which in contaminated state needs to be liberated by following Jain path of soul-liberation. Consciousness is the essence of soul, with perception, apprehension, intelligence,
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