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PRAVACANASARA.
Agamas (1, 81-2; III, 33 etc.); and the last consists in adopting perfect equanimity after practising the essential duties and penances in an ascetic life that go to stop the influx and exhaust the deposit of karmas.
When the soul is free from the four destructive or malignant types of karmas, namely Jñanavaraṇīya, Dars'anavaraniya, Mohaniya and Antaraya, it manifests pure consciousness and becomes self-sufficient (I, 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 Svayambhu. There the spirit develops excellent infinite strength, excessive lustre and supersensuousness (I, 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 (I, 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 (I, 43-4). The highest happiness which was the object of his meditation has been reached (II, 106). Then he becomes Siddha after the ramaining four aghati-karmas are destroyed; as the sun is all lustre and warmth, He is all knowledge and happiness and a Divinity (I, 68).
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1
TRANSMIGRATION A FACT AND A DOGMA.-According to Jainism the round-of-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 Vedantic Māyā, karman explains samsara. 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 divinity stands almost by itself; here, as in other tenets, Jainism inclinell. towards realistic pluralism. Every soul, when it is completely free from karmas, becomes itself (Svayambhu), and it is the divinity. Divinity as a type, a level of spiritual evolution and a culmination of spiritual attainments,
1 Importance attached by the Jainas to their Agamas can be seen from the third book of Pravacanasära.
2 In the Upanisads the word Svayambhu is used, and it signifies the self-existent Brahman (Is'a 8; Katha 4, 1; etc). The Jainas too call their divinity as Svayambhu. By using this word they mean that the individual self has become (svayam bhuta) the Universal one; the Vedantic sense is that of self-created and self-existent. This designation is used by various Jaina authors: Kundakunda in Pravacanasara I, 16; Samantabhadra in his Svayambhu-stotra; Siddhasena, at the opening of his stutis; Pujyapada in Siddha. bhakti 4; and many other later authors.
