What is Jainism

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 32

22
ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
prove its existence; but he who will prove its existence will at least know it himself. Now extend the scope of the conclusion and we have it that every thing that can ever be proved to exist must be known to at least one being-which is our first proposition.
The second proposition-that the soul is a substance whose function it is to know-has already been established in these pages and needs no further proof now. Now, since the soul is a substance and since the properties of a substance are the same wherever it may be found, it follows that all souls are alike in respect of their attributes and function. Hence, what one soul can know, all others can know also. Thus every soul has the capacity to know all that every other soul knew in the past, knows now, or will ever know in the future. In other words, every soul is omniscient by nature, that is, in potency. The cause or causes which stand in the way of the realisation of this potential omniscience will be enquired into later when we come to investigate the doctrine of karma. Meanwhile we shall study the nature of happiness which every living being is anxious to secure for himself.
Observation shows that happiness, like knowledge, is only a state or condition of Life itself. Certainly there is no such thing as happiness in the outside world, and even if there were it would not be easy to imagine how it could confer happiness on oneself. The truth is that true happiness only arises from within, and generally only when the soul is freed from the load of anxiety or worry in some form or other. The feeling of joy which a school boy feels on his success in an examination only arises from within, and is clearly occasioned by the assurance that never again need that ordeal be undergone. The sense of freedom from future straining and striving is, thus, the immediate cause of joy. which, as stated before, arises from within Life's own mysterious being. Life or Soul, then, is the very Fountain-spring of joy.
Passing on now to a consideration of Eternal Life, it is easy to see that every soul is immortal by nature, being, as already noted, devoid of parts which might disintegrate or fall apart. Bodily death, it will be seen, is due to the soul's association with or ensoulment in a physical body which is liable to decompose and disintegrate, being