Sacred Philosophy

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

Page 30

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niscience, bliss and immortality are the very things which we associate with our most exalted conceptions of Divinity. It follows, therefore, that every soul is a God in embryo, and only needs full unfoldment to attain to Godhood. This is why we find all religions concurring in the ancient injunction: man know thyself. Mahomed also said: 'He who knoweth himself, knoweth God.' The Bible, too, exhorts us to attain the perfection of God in the following remarkable words (Matt. V. 48):
"Be ye therefore perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect.”
It was certainly meant that the perfection of God could be accomplished by the human soul, for otherwise it would be monstrous to ask one to do a thing which it is impossible to attain. A Mahomedan poet puts the case even more clearly when he says:
چوار شود بیدار
خدائے در خواب است * تو ندانی
تا تو هستی
The use of the word clue is here very significant, the translation being : so long as the egotistiçal 'l' in thee is in evidence, a God is asleep; when thou shalt cease to be, he shall wake up. Shams Tabrez also said :
:
:
. تبریزم که گشتم شیفته بر خود - عجب من شمس چو خود را خرد نظر کردم نه دیدم جز خدا در خود -
[Tr.--- What a wonderful being am I, Shams of Tabrez: when I came to look into myself, I found none but God in the self.]