Spiritual Enlightenment

Author(s): Yogindu Deva, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Radiant Publishers

Page 50

Spiritual Enlightenment
Upanishads look at the world as a fundamental unity one with Brahman who is all-in-all.
Yogindu's Atman Compared with that in Upanishads: Joindu's conception of Atman which is the same as that of Kundakunda and other Jaina authors, is like this: Atman is a migrating entity of sentient stuff associated with Karmic energy since eternity. The world contains infinite Atmans, the transmigratory destiny of each being determined by its Karmas. Atman is immaterial as distinguished from Karman which is a form of matter. Though the soul assumes different bodies and acquires other physical accessories, it is essentially eternal and immortal. Its transmigratory journey comes to a stop, when Karmic matter is severed from it through penances, etc., and the Atman is realized and becomes Paramatman. Even in liberation the soul, with all its potential traits fully developed on account of the absence of Karmic limitations, retains its individuality. So there will be infinite liberated souls. The very idea of the infinity of souls allows no question to be raised that the world might one day be empty when all the souls have attained liberation. All such souls, as dogma would require, which have become light by the destruction of Karmic weight, shoot forth to the top of the universe and stop there permanently in eternal bliss with no possibility of further upward motion as there is no medium of motion in the superphysical space. Though these details touch here and there the Upanishadic concepts of Atman especially in the Group Three, there are fundamental differences. In Jainism both spirit and matter are equally real; the number of souls is infinite; and each soul retains its individuality even in Immortality. In the Upanishads there is nothing real besides Atman which is conceived as an impersonal pervasion identical with Brahman, the cosmic substratum. The Atman in Jainism is not a miniature of any universal soul as in Upanishads, but it carries with it the seeds of Paramatman which status it will attain when freed from Karma-matter. In the Upanishads and