Gandhis Teachers Rajchandra Ravjibhai Mehta

Author(s): Satish Sharma
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyapith Ahmedabad

Page 56

38
Gandhi's Teachers : Rajchandra Ravjibhai Mehta
directed at getting rid of the debts of past karmas in the previous lives. 34
The creatures are classified into five categories according to the number of senses they possesses. The highest beings have five senses and gods, men, beings in hell, and some higher animals fall in this category. The five senses they possess are hearing, sight, taste, smell, and touch. In addition, gods, men, beings in hell, and some higher species (e.g., monkeys, cattle, horses, elephants, parrots, pigeons, and snakes) also possess intelligence. The second category of beings have four senses of sight, taste, smell, and touch. Flies, wasps, and many other large insects are in this group. The third category of beings are smaller insects with the three senses of taste, smell, and touch. Ants, fleas, and various bugs and moths are in this group. The two-sensed creatures have only taste and touch. Worms, leeches, shellfish, and similar other creatures are the examples. The fifth category of beings have one sense only, of touch. Here, we find trees, shrubs, vegetables, earth-bodies,35 water-bodies, and wind-bodies. 37 The Sutrakritanga indicates that everything has a soul, earth, water, fire, wind, grass, trees, plants, and all creatures that are born of the egg, of the womb, of dung, and of liquids - "know that they all seek freedom and happiness. In hurting them, men hurt themselves and will be born again among them." Even a flame has a soul and may be reborn later as a human being. Additionally, all things in the universe suffer through the cycles of birth and death and need release from karmic matter. So, the advice is "live with self-control.....subduing both anger and fear." Self-control is necessary for one's moksha.38
Consciousness is the essence of the soul, with perception and intelligence as its manifestations. The former is simple apprehension and the latter is conceptual knowledge. Basically, things are extramental realities. As light reveals itself and other objects simultaneously, so does jnana (knowledge) reveal itself as well as others. Thus, soul knows itself and other objects concurrently. The five sources of