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જૈન યુગ
Every man and for the matter of fact, every living being wants happiness and peace. We can understand this better in the case of human beings. All actions of a man are guided by this sole motive. No man acts with a view to get misery. Man's aim is always to get happiness. Whether a man acts as a saint or a scoundrel, his aim is to gain happiness. Is it not peculiar that men act in contrary ways for the same aim? The reason is that they are not clear in their minds what constitutes happiness and what are the correct means to get it. Nevertheless it shows that happiness is a property of the soul and all living beings aspire to get it.
No living being wants to die. Even birds and insects have instincts to save themselves from harm and death. Man has always been trying to conquer illhealth, disease, accidents etc. which lead to death and to conquer death itself. Look at the medical and surgical researches. They all go to show that man does not want to die. Why? Because immortality is also a basic property to soul.
We thus find that knowledge, freedom, happiness and immortality are the inherent properties of soul. We can in the same way investigate other basic properties. Basic properties of substance are constant. They cannot vary from unit to unit. A number of sample of pure gold will all possess the same property. Their colour, touch, feel, specific gravity will be the same. If a sample is different from a standard sample it shows that it contains some alloy, i. e. foreign matter or impurities. All souls must similarly have constant properties. No two pure souls can differ from one another. If they differ, they can do so only if they have got some foreign matter mixed up with with them, they are then not pure.
२८
ઑકટોબર ૧૯૫
We see in the world that even among mankind different degrees of happiness and misery, intellect and stupidity, health and sickness etc., i. e. the intellect qualities of soul are found in different degrees. We also see that animal kingdom and the plant kingdom possess the good qualities in a lesser degree. This means that the embodied souls have got different proportions of foreign matter, attached to them and the less the quantity of foreign matter, the purer the inherent qualities of soul, i. e. the inhernt qualities of soul are covered by foreign matter in different degree in different souls.
The natural aim of a living being can only be to remove the foreign matter and attain Purity. The activities and actions of living being show that the soula living being- is exerting to that end to get rid of all foreign matter and to attain the Pure State. But owing to the influence of foreign matter, the embodied soul does not know the right way. It is, so to say, groping in the dark and follows the path of trial and error. There have been souls in the past, who have been successful in their experiments fully or almost fully and they have shown the path for other. But every body is not capable of taking advantage of the results of their experiments. But people do take advantage in different degrees according to their capacities. Those who have no faith in those experiments and their results, naturally get no advantage. Others who have got faith, get benefit to the extent of the strength of their faith and conviction. Even though some have faith, they are incapable of acting upto it and so do not get the full advantage. Even man, the most intellectual among living beings, has got certain weakness, due to the bondage of foreign matter to his soul which does not allow him to act even according to his faith. People know that
