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KARMA: THE MATERIAL BASIS..
soul. In Jainism, the effects of dispositions metamorphosed into material-particles which form the physical basis of our life are called karma-sarira like the linga-sarira of Sankhya. These are the finer particles of matter of our past experiences being embodied in which the soul passes out the living body dead. The subtle-body, according to Vedanta, which consists of seventeen elements, is material but transparent, so it remains imperceptible at the time of migration from one body to other. So here the Advaitins almost agree with the Jainas. According to Jainism, the Jiva migrates out with the potentialities of the organs of its future body, which are manifestations of its thought and will. Jung's theory of Racial Unconscious seems very close to this idea. Nahar and Ghosh say: "the action-currents of the human thought and will have their vestiges on the experiential body which brings about a new arrangement in the atomic distribution of the karma-pudgala comprising the karma-Sarira."70
We can close the discussion of the subject of karma-sarira with a significant observation from Hartman: "the experience gained in our life may not be remembered in their details in the next life, but the impressions which they produce will remain." The idea of karma-body or inner nature of Huxley is suggestive for belief in the persistence of personality which stores up various experiences. The outer nature or the neural
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69 Bṛhad. Up. (S.B.), I. 4.17.
70 P. C. Nähar and K. C. Ghosh, An Epitome of Jainism, Calcutta, 1957, pp. 327-328. cp. Dr. Wiesman's theory of the "continuity of germ-plasm and transmission of those characteristics which are potentially contained in the structure of the germ-plasm from the common-stock. Odrigen is supposed to be the possible link between universal life and the gross matter"-(See Dr. Irene Bastow's article "Heredity as it affects immortality". Aryan Path, Bombay, March 1950); Gommaṭasara (Karma-kanda), 27; M. K. Jaina, Jaina Darsana, p. 168; Gommaṭasāra (Jiva-kāṇḍa), 199, Doctrine of Emanation of Soul or Jiva-samudghata, 202; Dravya Sangraha, 10 (See also Vṛtti, pp.10-12). 71 Quoted by P. C. Nähar & K. C. Ghosh, Ibid., p. 294.
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