Selected 100 Letters by Shrimad Rajchandraji

Author(s): Shrimad Rajchandra,
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Prabhavak Trust Hubli

Page 61

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SELECTED 100 LETTERS
the strength of ones thinking for self knowledge cannot work in contact with wrong spiritual guides or in engagement with not-self.
This is undoubtedly true. Shri Tirthankara calls Samadhi or concentration the firmness of self-experience, and its opposite he calls Asamadhi or non-concentration.
Shri Tirthankara calls the natural experience of one's own pure self as Dharma or religion.
Shri Tirthankara calls Karma as flickering in self-experience.
The way in which Shri Jain Thirthankara has decided the nature of bondage and liberation is not found in the Vedanth (Philosophy) and other related systems of philosophy and I am not able to see truth telling in other philosophies as I find in truth telling done by Shri Jin. In it good or bad results of internal thinking of the living soul are connected with his liberation or bondage, they are not decided by or connected with any bodily behaviour.
A man suffers from bodily diseases according to his past deeds and accordingly feeble, slow, dejected, hot, cold grow the condition of his body.
By the rise of a special type of a disease or by bodily debility the living body of a spiritually enlightened saint may shiver, may get ematiated or feeble, may become dejected, may lose strength, may be felt much angry or excited, may suffer from delusion, still the way he has cherished a desire for being spiritually instructed or for renunciation, the same way he mostly suffers his bodily diseases.
No living being has ever been found to have an imperishable body neither this is known nor possible. All living beings must experience death at one time or another. And this is the indubitable
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SELECTED 100 LETTERS experience of the living beings. In spite of this fact every living being forgets it and it is a matter of great surprise.
The all knowing non attached Tirthankar veetrag whom many exceptional powers were manifested has also seen the living body as impermanent and evanescent, then how can other ordinary men make their bodies permanent ?
Shri Jin has said that every particle of substance is capable of infinite changes. A living being has also infinite changes and every atom of substance goes through infinite changes. Conscious atom has conscious changes. The changes of a living being are never unconscious, and the changes of a lifeless substance are never conscious. The determination by Shri Jin is perfectly correct as such is so seen by thinking about the natures of conscious and unconscious substances.
Do think about the living being, area in which he lives, the changes he undergoes, the numerable and innumerable changes or stages of substances conscious and unconscious according to your capacity. When you think about any thing that is not self, you should bear in mind that such thinking is done for helping your effort for liberation and not for purely knowing its nature.
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57 (569)
Mumbai Falgun Vad Third V-S 1951
Salutations to Shri spiritual Saints
The only remendy for a release from all afflictions and all miseries, is self-knowledge which is not possible without proper