Philosophy and Psychology of Jainas

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Z_Selected_Speeches_of_V_R_Gandhi_002018.pdf

Page 25

which we have no liabilities and no creditors, the state in which we may live without any creditors or in a perfectly free condition. That is the liberated condition. The idea of Karma is very complicated. I have told you something of it in my former lectures. The one chief point is that that theory is not the theory of fatalism, not a theory in which the human being is tied down to some one, bound down by the force of something outside himself. In one sense only will there be fatalism, if we are free to do many things, we are also not free to do other things, and we cannot be freed from the results of our acts. Some results may be manifested in great strength, others very weakly; some may take a very long time and others a very short time; some are of such a nature that they take a long time to work out, while the influence of others may be removed by simply washing with water and that will be the case in the matter of acts done incidentally without any settled purpose or any fixed desire. In such a case with reference to many acts we may counteract their effects by willing to do so. So the theory of Karma is not in any sense a theory of fatalism, but we say that all of us are not going to one goal without any desire on our part, not that we are to reach that state without any effort on our part, but that our present condition is the effect of our acts, thoughts and words in the past state. To say that all will reach the perfect state merely because some one has died that they might be saved, merely from a belief in this person, would be a theory of fat-lism, because