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58
Letter 9
We have already seen that all these six substances accommodate each other. The Jeev Dravya knows the body which occupies the same space as is occupied by the Jeev Dravya himself.
But the usual confusion or misconception is, that the Jeev believes the body as himself. The capacity to know is of Jeev. But he wrongly thinks that it is the attribute of the body. Is it not a great pity ? That the knower does not know himself. Since, he thinks his body to be himself, naturally all the things related to the body are considered to be that of the Jeev. This fallacy arises because he has not understood the nature of Pudgal.
You may wonder that, if the Jeev substance is different and separate from Pudgal substance then why bother about other things, let us get the information of Jeev only.
But, to be on the safer side, in daily life also we see that we should know the qualities or the nature of both the original true commodity, and the other things with which it is mixed up. Like, if we want to know whether the gold which we are buying is pure and not mixed with any other metal like brass or copper, then we must know the qualities of brass and copper as well, along with the qualities of pure gold.
Once you know the qualities of both the commodities, then we will not be cheated while buying gold. Similarly, if we want to differentiate between a diamond and a glass crystle, then we have to learn the characteristics of both, the diamond, as well as the glass.
Similarly the characteristics of Pudgal are discussed in details in our scriptures, because of the fact that we usually attach oneness of the self with the body which is in fact Pudgal and not Jeev. We must know what is Pudgal and understand that I am not that Pudgal body.
There are two different kinds of Pudgal, or to be more specific the Pudgal substance can be found in two different states of existence. One is Paramanu Teriy. This is the smallest particle of Pudgal, which can not be divided into any further parts. Commonly it is being called as atom.
But with today's scientific knowledge we see that even atom itself is divisible into protons, electrons and neutrons. So, this word atom is not the correct word to describe Paramanu. Hence we will continue to refer by its original name Paramanu.
And the other state is Skandha ( ) l.e. when two or more Paramanus come together and get bounded to each other, then that union or state of coming together is called Skandha ( ). Skandha literally means combination. In any Skandha there can be two or more or innumerable or infinite number of Paramanus. A very small Skandha is usually reffered to as molecule.
