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JAINISM: A THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY "GOD IN JAINISM"
The Ātman (soul) is of three kind, viz., external soul, internal soul and supreme soul. One should give up attachment for the external and then by knowing oneself realize the soul. But he is an ignoramus who takes body for the soul. But he is a Wiseman who considers himself as an embodiment of knowledge and as free from karman after quitting everything external: that is Paramātman. Thus it is the Internal by leaving everything External that becomes the Supreme. Samyag-darśana or Right Faith is attained by the ātman, when finding an opportune time delusion is destroyed: thus necessarily the ātman is realized. And the Wiseman is neither of any of the perverted attitudes, created by Karman, he identifies with himself.
Ātman is without old age and death, which refer to the body; so one should not be afraid of them. One should meditate on pure spirit, ātman, without minding whether the body is cut, pierced or destroyed. The soul is essentially different from attachment etc., which are occasioned by karmas and other insentient substances. Some say that the soul is Omnipresent; some hold it to be devoid of knowledge; some say that it is body size; and some other says that it is void (sūnya). The ātman is all pervading in the sense that, when free from karmas, he comprehends by his Omniscience physical and super physical worlds. Sensitive knowledge no more functions in the case of souls who have realized spiritual light; and in this sense the soul is devoid of knowledge. The pure soul, there being no cause neither expands nor contracts, but it is of the same size. It is void in the sense that, in his pure condition, it is not amenable to any of the eight karmas and eighteen faults.
In Jainism both spirit and matter are equally real; the number of souls is infinite; and each soul retains its individuality even in immortality. In the Upanişad there nothing real besides ātman, which is, conceived as impersonal pervasion identical with Brahma, the cosmic substratum. Ātman in Jainism is not a miniature of any Universal soul as in Upanişads, but it carries with it the
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