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INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
Another factor that has always been inherent in our soul, even when it was still clothed in the forms of the most primitive beings, is the urge or initial cause, or “autonomous capacity»75 to free itself from the chains of bondage-causing inclinations. This is the fundamental, ever-pressing driving force of evolution towards liberation. The translator of one English version of the Tattvārthadhigama Sūtra, Nathmal Tatia, writes: “Moral and spiritual consciousness only dawn for the soul when it is sufficiently conscious of, and confronted with, the force that has eternally been keeping it ensnared. To facilitate this, the soul has an innate, beginningless ‘autonomous capacity' that is always struggling to relieve the soul of its karmic burden. This capacity is the willpower which drives the soul towards liberation” (p. 280). These two factors – the potentiality to become free and the urge to self-liberation – are the indispensable precursors to the following stage.
But let us first reflect on the nature of living beings as presented in the Jain teachings. We see that at the core there is: 1) a jīva or soul that is pure and omniscient by its very nature; 2) a component of great compassion and enlightenment that may at the proper moment, due to the right “call from below,” project a ray of spiritual light and energy into the recipient personal consciousness, thus temporarily enlightening the mind and setting it aflame to the extent that it is able to contain that ray; 3) an innate desire or driving force towards liberation; 4) a lower, passionate mind that is the slave of its illusions, which continuously draws karmic elements of a lower nature around the soul, thus blinding clear vision and counteracting the free development of the higher faculties and keeping the soul in bondage. The whole is dressed in three vestures: 1) the karmic body, or body composed of karmic matter particles, the causal body of the outer form as well as one's personal mental and emotional tendencies; 2) the electric body formed of fine molecules of electric matter and 3) the physical body.
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