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102
THE JAINA JAZETTE
forcible and terse :
"O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?"
Can there be anything more serious than this? There is nothing of your arm or easy-chair speculation in the apostolic language here. The apostle is in deadly earnest.
The body, the object of so many of our fond affections, is a hindrance in the soul's path, and must be removed, because sin is associated with and centred in it. But is there any difficulty attaching to the destruction of the body? Can it not be put an end to by something that is destructive of life, e.g., by poison ? Aye! there is the rule; the difficulty is precisely here, and it is a very great difficulty! For death by suicide does not effect a complete separation between the body and the soul, as it leaves two subtle inner vestments * adhering to the spirit, which is immediately drawn into another womb by the forces of magnetic attraction operating on it, through the electric material of those inner vestments, and is reborn somewhere in due course of time with a new outer bodily cover. We must therefore distinguish this, the suicidal, form of death from the idea of death in the Pauline Epistle referred to above. This distinction consists in the cessation of sin, which is destroyed by dying in the proper way and which continues in the ordinary mode of demise. St. Paul, therefore, correctly says : -
"For he that is dead is freed from sin " (Romans, v. 7). We must not, of course, take it to mean death in the normal sense, what is meant is only for he that is dead to the body, etc.' The problem, then, is how to die so as to be alive ever more thereafter,
* In the Bible these inner bodies are not specifically mentioned, but the whole doctrine is briefy given in a different garb. In Thessalonicus (iv. 23) mention is made of " spirit, soul and body " which acquire great significance in the light of the following statement in the Epistle to Hebrews (see chap. iv. 12) :-“ For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow. . . ." It is clear from this that what St. Paul regards as soul is the inner vestment, intervening between the purity of spirit and the gross material body, and that separation between soul and spirit is possible by knowledge divine that cuts asunder more sharply than the sharpest
sword. Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
