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Veer Sagar Jain: ConveptofSoul/Self(Ātmc) in Jain philosophy
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Many spititual texts of Jain say that one can never experience self with the aid of external media and the only way to experience is by meditating upon the knowledge attribute of the self.'8 The practitioner who wishes to experience the self should think / contemplate that the entity which intuits and knows is me and everything else is non-self.' We can explain the process of experiencing the soul in simple and lucid terms as follows:
i. Acquire true and correct knowledge of soul and understand it properly.
ii. Divert all wandering and external tendencies of sense organs and mind towards the inner self or soul i.e. from gross body to subtle body and then to soul.
iii. Get rid of thoughts of attachment, aversion and just concentrate / meditate on the inner self. 10. Three types of soul : external, internal and supreme
Jain texts talk of three types of soul namely; external (bahirātmā), internal (antarātmā) and supreme (paramātmā). i. External : The self that thinks that the body it owns is the soul is deluded and ignorant20)
ii. Internal: The self that understands its nature properly is with right vision and faith.21 iii. Supreme: The self that is completely detached from externa! impurities and is omniscient. Supreme soul is of two types namely
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Samayasāra 205, commentary verse 143 Samayasara 298,299 Yogindu, Yogasāra 10 Yogindu, Yogasara 8
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