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I am the Soul
Similarly, this jiva too has been immersed in an affected disposition from infinite time. Its chetan process produces only affected feelings. But once knowledge arises, and the illusion is broken, then it does not take even a moment to throw out the affected disposition. Once the jiva realises that 'I am a chetan atma, and that this inanimate world is not mine', how will the affected disposition remain?
Illusion is mithyatva. Believing a thing to be like what it is not is illusion. In darkness, a rope creates an illusion of a snake. You begin to scream out of fear. But, if somebody picks up the rope in hand and says, 'Brother! Look this is only a rope, not a snake', then the illusion is broken at that very moment. It does not remain.
The jiva too has two types of illusions. One is the possessive nature - the feeling of possession in something or somebody who is not its own, that they are mine. This possessive nature leads to attachment and aversion and as a result there is only sorrow. But the jiva should think properly that no thing in this world ever belonged to or will ever belong to anybody. How can it at all? You are chetan, substance is jada. What relation can chetan and jada have? The two can never unite. Even when they meet, they cannot belong. Like two paramanus which join to make a skandha. They remain together for any length of time as a skandha. Then the two paramanus fall apart. Then they may or may not join up. So what appeared as united paramanus, could not belong to each other. Then how can totally independent chetan and jada belong to each other?
No thing or person can belong to anybody. My and mine are merely illusion, nourishing illusion. The own valuable feelings of the chetan are the only things that belong to it, nothing else. For we see that when the chetan atma leaves the body and goes away, the thousands of things and hundreds of people present here do not go with it. They remain here.
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