Jain Journal 1969 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 42

JULY, 1969
moulded spontaneously. Had there been no such material change and no inflow of karmas, the viewpoint asserts, there would have been no bondage, no enjoyment and consequently no misery of the soul. In this way, an organism of the soul comes to be the bundle of R's (reactions) against different S's (stimulii). It does not have its own independent and absolute entity. Or, to put in the terminology of Bertrand Russel, it appears as a perspective, a neutral entity wherein the aspects of several different things function together. Thus the soul is held responsible for all the affairs so long as it occupies the central position in the focus of mental perspective. But no sooner the view-point shifts from the soul to the matter than the soul escapes responsibility of world forming. The Jaina, however, reconciles both the view-points through his non-absolute outlook, and tends to preserve both of the conflicting views as correct, and professes the mutuality of the soul with the matter accordingly. In this way, the psychic influx (bhāvāsrava) causes the material influx (dravyasrava), and vice-versa.15 But it is valid only from relative point of view; for, realistically the cause and the effect merge into the substantial identity; whereas the activities of the soul and the matter are not substantially identical. From real point of view, the soul is the cause of its own thought-activities, while the matter is that of its own. Realistically the phychic influx (bhāvāsrava) is caused by the soul's own previous thought-activities (bhāvas) and the material influx (drvyasrava) by material ones. On realistic level such a parallelism is perpetual. It may cease to be if either side of it may anyhow be made to cease initially. Such a voluntary initiation is possible only in the spiritual side, because it is the experiencing agent and the sufferer of miseries. The material influx (dravyasrava) and the material bondage (dravyabandha) are only the material translation of spiritual sufferings. But change in both the sides is so accurate and concurrent that empirically they have no exclusive value, and appears to be dynamic in mutual causation.
Since the soul, in this mutuality of causation, is a sentient entity that wills, it looks quite possible that sometimes this mutuality may not remain mechanical, especially when the soul would voluntarily restrain its thought-activities and would be immune from the side of matter. In such a spiritual state, the material influx (dravyasrava) would take place, but finding no receptivity in the form of psychic influx (bhāvasrava) it would not retain itself there, thus causing no bandha at all.16 This proves that as a result of a previous cyclic movement, inflow takes
15 A. Kh. K. kavya, 119, 121; Ssr., 80. 16 Ssr., 177, 178.
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