Religion and Philosophy of the Jainas

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Jain International Ahmedabad

Page 66

CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT
33 there is something divine in man; that there is in him the nonphenomenal agent on whom the phenomenal attributes of feeling, thinking and willing depend. To the Hindu philosophers this agent was self-evident (svayamprakāśa). Of course, this agent, which they called Self was not discovered in a day. We see in the Upanişads many attempts to discover and grasp it. I shall give you a kind of allegory representing the search after this Self from the Chandogya Upanişad. It is a dialogue supposed to have taken place between Prajāpati, the lord of creation, and Indra, as representing the devas, the bright gods and Virocana representing the asuras, the opponents of the devas. Prajāpati is said to have uttered the following sentence : "The Self (ātman) free from sin, free from age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to desire and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that is what we search out, that is what we must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and understands it obtains all worlds and desires, that is, final beatitude."
The gods and the demons both heard these words and said, "Well, let us search for that Self by which if one has searched it, all worlds and all desires are obtained." Thus saying Indra went from the devas, Virocana from the demons and both without having communicated with each other, holding fuel in their hands as is the custom with pupils approaching their master. They dwelt there as pupils for thirty two years and served Prajāpati. At the end of thirty two years Prajāpati turns his face to them and asks, "For what purpose have you been both dwelling here ?” They replied that they had heard the saying of Prajāpati and that they had both dwelt near him because they wished to know the Self. Prajāpati like many of the ancient sages does not show himself inclined to part with his knoweldge at once. He gives them several answers which though not exactly wrong are equivocal and open to a wrong interpretation. He says first, "The person that is seen in the eye, that is the Self. This is what I have said: this is the inmortal.
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