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FURTHER ELUCIDATIONS
59
“The ladder which thou sawest, having twelve steps having two human faces which changed their appearancenow this ladder is this age, and the twenty four faces are the kings of the lawless heathen of this age. Under these kings will be tried (thy children's children and the line) of thy sons...” (The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament :
The Ladder of Jacob, pp. 96, 98 and 99). The allusion, though not complete in all respects, undoubt. edly points, in the above account, to the four and twenty Tirthamkaras, who are described as the kings of the lawless heathen, under whom the line of Jacob will be judged. The significance of these terms is as follows: the lawless heathen are the non-Israelites who have attained to Self-Realization (risen above the law, whence the description lawless). The full significance of the term lawless will become clear at once, if a reference be made to the amusing, and at times also bitterly tantalising, controversy between the zahids (strictly pious followers of ritualism, i.e., the dead letter of the law) and rinds (who have shaken themselves free from chilling ritualism) in Islam. The unbounded contempt in which the latter held their rivals will be evident from a single couplet of a Persian gnostic which runs as follows :
+ Zahid-i gumgashta ka mujh rind se itna hai fark : Woh kahe Alla hu, main kahun Allah huni
Translated into English it reads : the difference between the zahid who has lost his way and the free-thinking me (rind) is only this: he says 'Alla hu ' (there is God; I say · Allah hun' I am God)! Hence, those who have realized the Self are the lawless, and their four and twenty Kings are the twenty four Tirthamkaras, under whom will be judged the children and descendants (followers) of Israel, that is to say, by whose standard will judge themselves all those who seek to attain to Spiritual Perfection.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
