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AWAKENING OF ENERGY-VALUE AND PURPOSE
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grown up, strong and clever ? If the bow and the string were not broken, any young man can shoot an arrow from them. It is not because the child's soul is different from that of a young man or that the former cannot shoot an arrow and the latter can. Both possess the same soul. However, the weapon which the child wields is a broken weapon and, therefore, it cannot shoot the arrow. The weapon of the young man is in workingorder, and, therefore, he can shoot the arrow. The two bows are not the same. That makes the difference and not the soul."
Let us understand the moral of the anecdote. Human life is composed of three elements-the soul, the body and energy. The agamas adopt the analogy of the tridanda (a bundle of three sticks) to explain the same idea. The soul is a long way away from us not physically but metaphorically. It is embedded so deep in us that it is not visible with the physical eye. We are unable to sink into that depth.
Although our life is composed of the soul, the body and energy, we know only that which is gross i.e. the body. We do not know that which is subtle, nor do we try to know it. We do not try because we have never known the soul. You do not know anything about a person you have never met. This holds good about the soul also which we are unable to know because it is too subtle.
Philosophers have not been able to agree on the existence of that which is too subtle to be known. Is there something beyond that which we are able to contact with the sense-organs? Thus there arose two mutually contradictory views: (1) That which is knowable falls within the range of the sense-organs and (2) That which is unknowable happens to be outside the range of the sense-organs. The former is known through the instrumentality of the sense-organs whereas the latter remains unknown because there is no instrument with which it can be known. Philosophers opposed to this view held that what cannot be known with the help of the sense-organs can be known by other means, and, therefore, it is wrong to call it unknowable. It can be known only when we do not employ the sense-organs to know it. Logical reasoning and arguments will not do in this respect. And yet it is pertinent to ask as to how we can know that which the
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