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in every respect and put a limit to every power in me. In my pure-self, I am a perfect whole, apart from everything, dependent on nothing eternal, immortal, invisible, invincible, above pleasure or pain, hope or despair, subject to no gravitation, no force, all powerful, all happy, seeing all, knowing all. I have attributes, besides, too numerous to be enumerated, but my deceitful companion has made the wear coloured spectacles and see things in quite a disguised and false light; so I have lost sight of all of them. I have not stopped here. On the contrary I have gone so far, that even if any one reminds me of any of my attributes, I disown it. If some one says, "you are a knower of all things." I reply, you are a liar." What I now take to be mine, are Anger, Pride, Delusion and Avarice. To pine for momentary worldly gains and to do all sorts of nonsense gard as my true function, to indulge in the pleasures of the sense and of the mind as my prime duty, to love this person or that thing as my only care. All that belongs to matter, I call my own. In the material world if any one is seen bewailing, for the fact, at the coat which he has put on to save himself from cold, must be suffering cold, is rebuked as a lunatic but my wise self has not escaped such foolishness too. I have several times got troubled, that the flesh and blood that envelopes me is exposed to climatic hardships.
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SANATANA JAINA,
"If, ever, I recover from the state of torpor and think of flying up to my natural abode, I find myself chained. Though, I am, at intervals, lett by gross matter and am able to rise high up towards my home, yet I am dragged down by the weight of my two fetters, the Tuijas (Electric) and the Karman (made up of Karmas) bodies, which
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
are still in my feet and am again engaged. My condition, at the time,
resembles that of a flame which stretches upward but is fastened to the wick. Or more properly, I am like piece of cork fastened to a rock at the bottom of an ocean but struggling to come up. As the cork, when loosened instantly floats up to the surface, being helped to it by water, till stopped by the atmosphere above, so I, when liberated from everything which surrounds me, be that gross or fine, take my upward course aided by the Dharma Dravya (motion) till stopped by the Adharma Dravya (stillness). I have to undergo a long process of purging before I am so liberated. During this hard course of purification I, for the first time, realise my true self. Not only this. I also begin to read an inner and real meaning in everything else and reject the superficial and the unreal. I conquer my enemy, at last, with the trident of Right Faith, Right Knowledge, and and Right Conduct' and free myself from his imprisonment. I am, then, transferred, from this foreign land to my native place, there to reign for ever, in Perfect Bliss, Peace and Calmness."
Such is the account which your soul gives you of herself. You seem for the time being carried away by her discourse. You have her, cast an eye over your familiar physical world, but as you are yet fresh from the spiritual world, where you have just been, with impressions received there quite green in your memory, you look upon it in the spirit in which a spectator observes a cynometographic scene, believing all the phenomena to be transient and ephemeral. By and by your senses overcome you, and you are once more the gross man that you
were.
STUDY.
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