Niyamsara

Author(s): Kundkundacharya, Uggar Sain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 95

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THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE JAINAS.
concentration. In other words, path to liberation and liberation itself will become quite meaningless.
In Gatha 171, it has been laid down that neither knowledge can exist without soul nor can there be a soul without knowledge. It is so; because knowledge being the attribute of the soul, it can never exist independently. If it is said that knowledge does not know the self, then it means that it is quite separate from soul, which it is not. Therefore knowledge knows both the soul as well as all other objects.
It is a well known principle of Jainism that delusion, attachment and aversion, etc., are the main causes of karmic bondage with the soul. The Omniscient Lord having already destroyed the deluding karma (Mohaniya), it is entirely impossible that any impure thought-activity such as desire, etc., should arise in Him. Owing to the destruction of the knowledge-and-conation-obscuring karma, and attainment of perfect knowledge and conation, every knowable object is automatically revealed to Him, and nothing remains which he may desire to know. The action of a vibratory omniscient, (Sayoga Kevali), in moving about, and preaching Truth, etc., are not volitional; they are due to the operation of the remaining four non-destructive karmas. They are in a way like the reflex actions of the nervous system.
When the Lord Arhat, on the termination of His age karma destroys all the remaining karmas, he is absolutely liberated from all the material bodies, fine or gross. He is pure, perfect independent, free from rebirth, all blissful, has accomplished all that was to be accomplished, and as such, ascends directly upwards by force of nature and there abides at the summit of the Universe. He is then called a Siddha (a perfect liberated soul). This condition of a Siddha is known as Nirvána. The word Nirvána according to the Jaina doctrine means extinguishment of all foreign thought-activities, desire, attachment, aversion, etc., and the attainment of the soul's own pure individuality together with all its pure and natural attributes and modifications.