Laghutattvasphota

Author(s): Amrutchandracharya, Padmanabh S Jaini, Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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As soon as this is accomplished, the soul stops all vibrations (yoganirodha) for the period required to utter five syllables. This stage is called ayoga-kevalin, the kevalin without vibrations, the fourteenth and last guņasthāna. Then, just as a gourd held down by a coating of mud rises to the surface of water or as a flame by nature darts upwards, the soul moves instantaneously to the summit of the universe, beyond which there is no motion, and abides there forever.35 This is the perfect state of isolation (kaivalya) called siddha-paryāya; it is declared to be sādi. "with beginning", but ananta, “without end". The only thing that remains from the mundane past is the size of the soul which is less than that of the immediately preceding body.
It is well known that the Jaina is unique among the ātmavādins in believing that the soul is neither all-pervasive (vibhu) as suggested by the Sänkara Vedānta, Nyāya-Vaiseşika, and Samkhya, nor infinitesimal (aņu), as in the theory of Rāmānuja; it takes the size of the body (sva-deha-parimāņa), and is endowed with the ability to expand and contract its “innumerable' (asamkhyāta) space-points (pradeśas).36 This is considered a proper description on the grounds that such characteristics of the soul as consciousness are not found outside the body. One might expect that in the state of mokşa, where all signs of embodiment are eliminated, the soul would automatically become all-pervasive and maintain that condition forever. The kevali-samudghāta gives the soul a unique opportunity to overcome any karmically enforced 'shape', allowing it to become all-pervasive without actually leaving its substratum, the body. But its immediate contraction to the original shape just prior to death negates this unique experience and virtually fixes the liberated soul forever in the shape of its final body. It seems a bit strange that the kevali-samudghāta has not been made co-incidental with death, thus allowing the soul to be ail-pervasive forever. Exactly why the Jaina wants to retain the size of the previous body for the siddha must remain a moot question, for the scriptures are rather uncomfortably silent on this point. 37 It is claimed only that there is no real gain or loss of ātma-pradeśas, whether the soul takes the size of its body or of the universe, and also that the kevalin is past the stage of wishing for anything anyway! It is possible that the Jaina wants to maintain the individuality of the soul and furnish it with some differentiating mark where there would otherwise be no basis for distinction whatsoever? Does he wish to emphasize the fact that the exalted Jina, though he has overcome the modalities of wordly existence was himself a human being? If so, this theory could be construed as a further attempt to stay clear of merging into an Abaolute, and also to distinguish the jiva, from the Samkhya concept of an ever-free and all-pervading puruṣa.
The chapter ends with the author's devout wish that he too may become