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IV. 11]
RELATION BETWEEN SOUL AND KARMAN
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Vaisesika and the Buddhist had to keep spirit or consciousness quite aloof from matter, while the Jaina could conceive of the inter-influencing of the soul and the karmic matter. The conception of the immutability of soul dominated, in some form or other, the evolved systems, and was responsible for their insistence on the absolute aloofness of spirit from matter. Even the Buddhists who believed in radical momentary change could not escape from the influence of this conception, inasmuch as they do not admit as concrete a relation between the conscious and the material as do the Jainas between soul and karmic matter. The Jainas, on the other hand, were faithful to their thoroughly realistic tradition building up itself on the uncontradicted verdicts of experience. The Jaina conception of the co-operative association of spirit and matter and the postulation of the material counterpart of the spiritual states of passions owe their origin to this faithfulness to the original realistic and empirical attitude.
Now we come to the problem of relation between soul and karman,
II
RELATION BETWEEN SOUL AND KARMAN
The problem of relation occupies a very important place in metaphysical thinking. The Jainas, as realists, did not hesitate to accept whatever was given in uncontradicted experience, and moulded their logic in accordance with such experience. Substance and its modes (qualities also included) are given as identical as well as different in experience and as such the relation of identity-cum-difference was posited. Substance without modes or modes without substance can never be experienced. Both their identity and difference are equally given in experience. The dictum of abstract logic viz. 'What are different cannot be identical and what are identical cannot be different' is not accepted as universal and necessary because experience records cases where this dictum does not hold good, for instance, in the case of substance and its modes. The relation of spirit and matter is another problem. We have already referred to it on more than one occasion. The Jaina believes in concrete identity between the soul and the karmic matter in the state of bondage while the non-Jaina schools are reluctant to admit any real relation between spirit and matter and consequently have felt called upon to invent a number of devices to explain the fact of bondage. We have recorded in detail the positions of the various systems of Indian thought and their criticism from the Jaina standpoint. The karmic matter, according to the Jainas, mixes with the soul much in the same way as milk mixes
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