Risabha Deva

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

Page 51

CHAPTER VII
OMNISCIENCE
The fourth Kalyanaka in the life of a Tirthamkara is the attainment of Full All-embracing Knowledge , in other words, of Omniscience, by the destruction of the forces that keep it from blazing forth. There are four kinds of karmas termed ghātiyad (inimical or obstructive ) which are responsible for the loss of this great and divine attribute in our case. They are known as knowledge-obstructing, perceptioriobstructing, serenity-obstructing ( i.e., deluding ) and power-obstructing energies of karma. These inimical forces come into being by the fusion of spirit and matter, which is continually taking place in the case of the unemancipated soul, and are reinforced from moment to moment, so long as it is not characterised by Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct. Right Faith is acquired only when the energies of fanaticism, and of the worst forms of the four principal passions, namely, of anger, pride, deceit and greed are destroyed. No one who is filled with fanatical spirit, or is agitated by the most malignant form of the passions named, will ever be induced to listen to reason, or to study Religion in the spirit of sobriety and rationality. Therefore, these five kinds of forces have to be destroyed, or subdued, to acquire Right Fath. The seeker has also to rid him self of the tendency to compromise between fiction