Outlines of Jainism

Author(s): J L Jaini, F W Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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OUTLINES OF JAINISM
ether) that nothing can check them; they pass through all and they stand in the way of nothing else. In the language of the Tattvärtha-sutra (ch. ii, 41) they are apratighata, i.e. there is no resistance in them and they can pass through all. Their union with the soul is, of course, without beginning: for, in the last resort, they are the bases of operation of the binding forces of karmic matter on the soul (60).
There is a fifth body, peculiar to Jainism: it is called āhāraka. The perfect Jaina saint who has attained full knowledge and is waiting to shed the last body (kārmaṇa-śarīra) is rare. And the less advanced Jaina ascetic may be in doubt as to certain points in the ethics or metaphysics of Jainism. By the vows which he has taken he might be hindered from going to see the enlightened master. Therefore, on rare and urgent occasions, in consequence of the highly developed occult faculties of his soul, a spiritual man-like body emanates from his head and flashes across space to the feet of the master, where it solves the doubt; then it rushes back and re-enters the ascetic's head. This body is the aharaka body.
Of these five bodies, physical, angelic, special saintly, magnetic, and karmic, each is lighter and more refined than the preceding, and each surpasses the preceding by an infinite ratio in respect of the number of atoms which it contains (59). Of course, these bodies, except the physical, are invisible to ordinary human eyesight. But that cannot be a conclusive proof of their nonexistence. The positive proof is in one own's experience. Ordinary experience, analogy, and reasoning may point