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Men or Gods
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Dialogue between Prajapati and Indra we get a progressive development of the definition of the soul in four stages, as i) bodily, ii) empirical, iii) transcendental and iv) the absolute.18 The next step was to identify the self with the Absolute. As Radhakrishnan says, we may not understand the truth of the saying that thou art' tat tvam asi, but that does not give us a sufficient right to deny it."
The idea of the self has been a fundamental conception in Jaina philosophy. The existence of the soul is a presupposition. The soul is described from the phenomenal and the noumenal points of view. All things in this world are divided into living and non-living. From the phenomenal point of view, the soul is described as possessing empirical qualities. It is possessed of four prānas. It is the lord, the doer, and the enjoyer of the fruit of Karma. As a potter considers himself a maker and enjoyer of the clay pot, so the mundane soul is the doer of things and the enjoyer of the fruits of Karma. From the noumenal point of view, soul is pure and perfect. It is pure consciousness. It is unbound, untouched and not other than itself. Man is the Jiva bound by matter and it assumes gross physical body. Through the operation of Karma the soul gets entangled in the wheel of Samsāra. When it is embodied, it is affected by the environment, physical, social and spiritual in different ways. Then it identifies itself with the various functions of the bodily and social environment. William James distinguishes between the self as known or the me', the empirical ego, and the self as knower or the I. On the same basis, distinction between the states of the soul as Bahirātman. Antarātman and Paramātman has been made.
3. Apart from the real nature of man it would be necessary to know him as an individual in his physical and social environment. As an empirical individual man lives in this life and is influenced by the environment. To some extent he is a product
16. Chan. Up. VIII. 3-12. 17. Radhakrishnan (S): Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 170.
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