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Scientific Vision of Lord Mahāvīra
mundane soul occupies a particular size corresponding to the body. Hence, in the liberated state these characteristics are absolutely absent. Relation between Soul and Matter
The problem of soul-body relationship is discussed in many ways sometimes as the relation between soul and matter and sometimes as mindbody relationship. Metaphysically if we think of soul and matter, we find that the soul and matter are absolutely different entities. The soul is sentient while matter is non-sentient. As the Sthānănga Sūtra94 declares that the sentient can never become non-sentient and the non-sentient can never become sentient. Under such circumstances, can there be any kind of relationship between them, eternally independent elements as they are?
The Bh.$95 answers to the problem in different contexts at many places. At one place it refers to them as enjoyer and enjoyed respectively. At another place it discusses the problem as the interaction between soul and matter. And yet at another place it deals with the problem as the soulbody relationship.
The relationship becomes clear when it is asked whether a soul and matter can bind each other, contact each other, pervade each other and stick together through mutual attraction and identification.96
Lord Mahāvīra replied positively.97 There is a close relationship between the two principles: soul and matter. Because of this relationship souls fall in two categories viz., 'associated with matter' and 'disassociated from matter'. 98 The souls that are mingled with matter are called worldly or bound souls. Souls untouched by matter are called liberated.
How matter attaches to soul is depicted in the Bh.S through an example of a boat full of water. The example presented by Lord Mahāvīra before his disciple Indrabhuti Gautama is as follows:99
"Suppose there is a lake that is full, full to the brim, overflowing, ever swelling and evenly full of water like a pitcher.
Now, some person floats a giant boat with hundred inlets and hundred pores. In such situation, O Gautama, does the boat with water constantly flowing in through the inlets and the pores continue to remain full, full to brim, overflowing, over swelling and evenly full of water like a pitcher?
Yes, it does so.
For this reason, Gautama, it is said that the souls and material bodies exist bound with each other, in contact with each other, pervading each other, stuck with each other through mutual attraction and mutual identification.”
The souls entangled in worldly life are so intimately mixed up with matter that they cannot be defined independent of it. Due to this close
