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240 :: Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism
even indescribability to the soul, Moreover the analytical view-point effects an analysis of the same reality, and this analysis is not false if we mean it from the analytical viewpoint. Hence the parmārtha cannot be said to be absolutely indescribable. Samantabhadra says: “It is the nature of a proposition that it moves by negating the contents of other propositions." It is true that we cannot effect a complete description of the soul; but by that we cannot mean that the partial descriptions are absolutely false. They are false, no doubt, with respect to the complete comprehension of reality; but their falsity consists only of onesidedness. Such a nature of reality can be summed up only by the nonabsolute, because it defies all the absolute views. The parmartha is not the absolute, but it is the non-absolute. It is the non-absolute in which one and many, unity and difference, position and negation and permance and impermanence are peacefully united.
Absolute in Advaita Vedānta
Kundakunda's conception of the essence of the pure soul brings us to a consideration of the theories of the absolute or the ultimate reality of the universe as propounded by various thinkers. The absolute in Advaita Vedanta is ultimately identified with the universal of existence. In our experience we come across many mutually distinct objects, and the commonest element in them is existence. Advaita Vedānta upholds the absolutism of this element by negating all the distinctions with which it is found intermingled. This universal of existence or sat constitutes the body of the advaitin's absolute. This is the way we can effect an approach to the absolute. The existence of the absolute or Brahma is actually proved by a consideration of the lower. We cannot make a start from the higher, because the higher is beyond our comprehension. When the particular and the universal are seen together,
1. Samantabhadra: Aptamīmāṁsā, verse 3
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