Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 55

THE DOCTRINE
bodies in which the aggregatory process goes on because of their inherent qualities of cohesion and aridness. Referring to the Jaina conception of material atomism, Jacobi observed that “the Jainas seem to have worked out their system from the most primitive notions about matter.
The jīva ātman, soul, spirit, or the psychic principle) is the very antithesis of matter and cannot be perceived by the senses. It is essentially constituted of sentiency (cetanā) and its differentia is the manifestation of consciousness (upayoga) which takes the form of darśana (intuition or indeterminate perception) and jñāna (cognition or definitive knowledge), and flows at a time in any one of the three channels: inauspicious, auspicious and pure, indicating impiety, piety and purity, respectively. The development of the soul's sentiency is also three-fold: with regard to cognition (jñāna) which consists in the apprehension objectivity; with regard to action (karman), consisting in whatever is done by the soul; and with regard to the fruit (phala or bhoga) of action, which may be pleasure or pain, happiness or misery. In other words, the soul is either the knower (jñātr), the doer (karty) or the enjoyer (bhoktr), its three and only three predicates. The souls are infinite in number; some are pure, liberated ones (mukta), and the rest mundane (saṁsārin), living a bodily or embodied existence. Each soul is one complete whole in itself, is eternal, immortal and retains its individuality even in liberation. It is not all-pervasive and in the embodied state is of the same size as the body it happens to occupy. In its pure condition, it is without sense qualities, is all the quality of sentiency, is beyond inferential mark and has no definable shape. All souls are equal and alike in their inherent nature, essential qualities, intrinsic characteristics and potentialities, they are all capable of attaining liberation.