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I am the Soul
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themselves on the atma. This does not happen without being inspired by the atma.
The karmas lodged on the atma are also inanimate. They are attracted at the behest of atma, but if the jiva were to refrain from any feelings of attachment etc., then merely by the rise of the inanimate karma other karmas do not get attracted - there is no asrava. However powerful the infinite karmas, lodged on the utma, might be, but they are endowed with the power to inspire the outside karmic pudgala and attract towards themselves. From this view jiva has been considered the inspiration for karma but not the doer.
Inanimate things do not have this power. They cannot inspire any body in any way. You have an excellent volume of the scriptures. It remains in the book-case for years, but if the inspiration of self-study does not awaken from within and you do not pick up that volume, it does not inspire you, saying, "Brother! Pick me up and read!" Similarly, you are angry and there is a stick nearby. It does not fly on its own and hurt your enemy, but if you pick it up in your hand and throw it then it works. Why! If somebody goes into an armoury full of weapons and murders somebody, not a single weapon rises from its place to punish the murderer. There may be a thousand books of law amidst which a sinister crime may take place, yet not one of those books is going to be a witness. Thus, inanimate things do not have the power to inspire any body.
If it were so, then we would have seen the feelings of attachment etc., arising in pots and pans and they too would begin to bind karma. But we have never seen anger rising in any inanimate thing nor seen any such other emotion.
Thus karma bondage occurs only with the inspirational power of the atma. That power does not exist in the inanimate. Therefore, jiva is the doer of karma, and the other thing which
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