Spiritual Awakening and other Essays

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 10

THE CONCEPT OF SAMYAGDARŠANA (SPIRITUAL AWAKENING)
IN JAINISM
The ultimate goal of the spiritual aspirant is the achievement of the perfect state of existence. The ideal is not something situated in a distant land but it consists in the realization of the transcendental nature of one's own self. It is the self in its veritable, dignified, and ontological nature. We may pose a simple question: how can an innate nature of a thing be remote from it? or how can the original qualities and modifications of a substance exist apart from the substance even for a moment? The answer is that the self has been in a defiled state of existence since beginningless past. Notwithstanding the ideal as the realization of one's own true self the effort for its revival and actualization is not so attractive as may be expected. Rather the life of flesh is becoming easier than the life of the spirit. It is overwhelmingly astonishing, but it is a fact and undeniably stares us in the face. This convincingly gives one to understand that there is an intermediatory something which compels' one to cling to the creature comforts and earthly pleasures, and offer a great resistance to the realization of the sublime end. Confronted with this recognition, we cannot deny that there exists a principle known as Mithyātva (spiritual perversion), which offers a great resistance to the realization of the sublime end.
Mithyātva acts as a barricade to the soul's true life. It is at the root of all evils, the seed of the tree of Saṁsāra. It