Pravachanasara

Author(s): A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram

Page 121

88
Pravacanasara
manifests pure consciousness and becomes self-sufficient (1, 15); the pure self is realised, and all the developments of consciousness like agency, means, action and fruit are identical with the self (II, 35). In this state of self-realisation are developed omniscience and eternal happiness; therein the soul is called Svayambhū. There the spirit develops excellent infinite strength, excessive lustre and supersensuousness (1, 19). There is no trace of any misery and no place for any desires. The self is itself and nothing more, nor in need of anything more (II, 68). The whole range of objectivity is immediately and simultaneously visualised and known by him with no temporal and spatial limitations (1, 21-2, 37). He is himself, all knowledge, having nothing to do with karmas; his function of a knower, being his essential nature and spontaneous output, brings no karmas to him (1, 43-4), The highest happiness which was the object of his meditation has been reached (II, 106). Then he becomes Siddha after the remaining four aghātikarmas are destroyed; as the sun is all lustre and warmth, He is all knowledge and happiness and a Divinity (1, 68).
TRANSMIGRATION A FACT AND A DOGMA.--According to Jainism the roundof-rebirths is a fact and transmigration a dogma; nay, we cannot think of Jainism without transmigration. The ball of rebirths is already set in motion since beginningless time, and it stops only when the soul attains liberation. The cause of rebirth is karma which is a subtle form of matter that is, since eternity, associated with the soul. Like Vedāntic Māyā, karman explains samsāra. As to the means of getting liberation it is a part of religious details which should not detain us long; but one thing I want to note that the Jaina philosophers have devoted a great attention to the study of living organisms and the different spiritual stages which result from the suppression and destruction of different karmic forces.
THE IDEA OF DIVINITY EXPLAINED.-The Jaina conception of divinity stands almost by itself: here, as in other tenets, Jainism inclines towards realistic pluralism. Every soul, when it is completely free from karmas, becomes itself (Svayambhū),1 and it is the divinity. Divinity as a type, a level of spiritual evolution and a culmination of spiritual attainments, (p. 93:] is one; but every soul, even when it attains divinity, retains its individuality. It is the free soul, the higher self, as distinguished from souls in mundane existence. The Jaina God as a type is an ideal to all the aspirants on the religious path. The conception of god holds a great vista of optimistic vision before the religious devotee. It is often said that the aim of religion is the realisation of the potentially divine in man; this means that the self not only knows itself but becomes itself (svayambhūta), now immune from all matter; by becoming itself it becomes the God which nature was already inherent in the spirit, but, upto this time, crippled by karmas; and this then is the state of perfection.
1 In the Upanişads the word Svayambhū is used, and it signifies the self-existent Brahman
(Isa 8; Katha 4, 1; etc). The Jains too call their divinity as Svayambhū. By using this word they mean that the individual self has become (svayam bhūta) the Universal one; the Vedāntic sense is that of self-created and self-existent. This designation is used by various Jaina authors: Kundakunda in Pravacanasāra I, 16; Samantabhadra in his Sva. yambhū-stotra; Siddhasena, at the opening of his stutis; Pujyapāda in Siddhabhakti 4; and many other later authors.