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JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
he attains final liberation and is completely free from karmic matter. TRANSMIGRATION
The theory of transmigration presupposes the doctrine of karma. It also takes for granted the existence of a permanent conscious principle that undergoes various changes. The conscious principle, i.e., the soul passes through births and deaths without losing its essential nature. This very fact is to be understood as the theory of transmigration or metempsychosis. The force responsible for the successful performance of this process is known as karma. It is wholly on account of our own accumulated karmic forces that we enter into a human form, an animal form, a vegetable form, a celestial form, or a hellish form. As the situation of the forces that perform the functions of karma changes so also the form of our individuality changes. The personality made up of mental and physical characters is due to the working of karmic forces. All such phenomena as the extra-ordinary maturity of some children at an early age, the super-normal psycho-physical development of an ordinary person, and the like that cannot be explained by an average hypothesis necessarily indicate that something of which we have no empirical experience must have existed before actual birth. The Psychical Researchers also agree in thinking that the evidence in favour of the spiritistic hypothesis is now so strong that it may be justifiably employed as a working hypothesis. They admit that there is a strong evidence to prove survival. In the Jaina doctrine of karma, the karma that draws the soul to that body where it develops its own body for the working out of its accumulated karmas for that particular birth is known as 'ānupūrvī’. In accordance with the four states of existence (gati), there are four types of 'ānupūrvi': celestial, human, animal (including vegetable), and infernal. PROGRESSION AND RETROGRESSION
The Jaina philosophers, exactly like the other exponents of the theory of transmigration, hold that the individual has no choice but to reap the fruits of his actions. On some occasions the fruits are enjoyed in this very life, while sometimes they are enjoyed in a life hereafter. The Jaina thinkers do not agree with the belief that once consciousness attains to human level, there is no return; though man may become a super-man, he will never be less than
