Jaina Mysticism and Other Essays

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 26

niścaya-naya, the self is capable of enjoying such happiness as is transcendental, born of the self, supersensuous, incomparable, infinite and indestructible. 19
Lastly, the niścaya-naya regards the self as its own lord (prabhu).20 It is its own enemy and friend, 21 it is not dependent on any other agency for its salvation. It is called svayambhū.22 It is a state of self-sufficiency which requires no other foreign assistance to sustain itself. It is itself the subject, the object, the means of its achievement; it achieves for itself, destroys the extraneous elements and is the support of its infinite potencies. Hence the self manifests its original nature by transforming itself into six cases; it is at once the nominative, the accusative, the instrumental, the dative, the ablative, and the locative case respectively.23
To sum up these two religious points of view, the niścaya and the vyavahāra, bring about the nature of self in its two aspects, namely, the transcendental and the empirical. Kundakunda affirms that transcendental spiritual experience surpasses all the conceptual points of view whether niscaya and vyavahāra. 24 The living religious experience is the non-conceptual state of existence. Amstacandra argues that the proper results of instruction to a disciple can only issue if he, after assimilating the nature of niscaya-naya and vyavahāra-naya, adopts the attitude of indifference towards both of these, i. e. if he transcends these intellectual points of view. 25
2 ii). Goal of Human Pursuance : As we have already said, niścaya-naya provides religious goal for the human aspirant. It is one of the ways of expressions of the religious goal. In the following we shall deal with some of its significant expressions which, no doubt, convey identical meaning.
First, the religious goal is described as the attainment of paramātman after one's passing through the state of antarātman and renouncing the state of bahirātman.26 The paramātman is parama ātman, the highest, infinite self. The bahirātman has awareness only of the physical body and its various
Jaina Mysticism and other essays