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I am the Soul
795 limits that a jiva can gauge. Once the jiva accepts this, then it can leave behind the narrowness and enter that vast field. This narrowness is what creates desire and possessiveness in a jiva.
Its possessiveness is unlimited in substances and relations that it meets. An ajnani is unwilling to let go of this at any cost. Why, if a substance or person leaves it, it begins to get engorged in the whirlpool of distress and feels its own sorrow! For such ajnani jivas there is no sorrow greater than the separation from mind, a substance or a person. This is absolute ignorance.
Indeed, has the separation from a person or a substance, that causes sorrow, happened for the first time? If the union is not for the first time, then neither the separation can be the first ever. Separation of the union is inevitable. Therefore, as many times as the substances or persons have united, they are bound to separate. This is the eternal truth. In the infinite past, these same substances or persons have been united with the jiva, in one form or the other, not once but many times over. Either they all left the jiva and went away, or the jiva has left them all and come away. The jiva has been wandering in this whirl for infinite number of times, from infinite time.
Let us consider this -- 'The poudgalika happiness that has been found in this present, whatever specific that is found, is something that only I have found and none other has. We take pride in such thinking. We are overwhelmed with our achievements. Since the others have not got it, we consider ourselves as more fortunate and the others as less so. We harbour many such illusions. However, when our viewpoint for looking at the pudgal dravyas changes, when we go into the depths and trace the substance, examine its past, we realise the truth.
What are poudgalika substances? All the substances that come into our visibility, all those inanimate substances, all pudgal skandhas, are groups - pindas of infinite number of paramanus
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