What is Jainism

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

Page 33

SACRED PHILOSOPHY
but a bundle of atomic matter; but that which is not made of atoms
or parts is not so liable in any way. Pure spirit, then, is immortal, in addition to being omniscient and blissful. But omniscience, bliss and immortality are the very things which we associate with our most exalted conceptions of Divinity. It follows, therefore, that every soul is a God in embryo, and only needs full unfoldment to attain to Godhood. This is why we find all religions concurring in the ancient injunction: man know thyself. Muhammad also said: 'He who knoweth himself, knoweth God.' The Bible, too, exhorts us to attain the perfection of God in the following remarkable words (Matt. V. 48):
"Be ye therefore perfect even as the Father in Heaven is perfect."
It was certainly meant that the perfection of God could be attained by the human soul; for otherwise it would be monstrous to ask one to do a thing which it was impossible to attain. A Muhammadan poet puts the case even more clearly when he says:
تو نماني چو او شود بیدار
تا تو هستی خدائے در خواب است
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The use of the word is here very significant, the translation being so long as the egotistical 'I' in thee is in evidence, a God is asleep; when thou shalt cease to be, he shall wake up. Shams of Tabrez also said :--
چر خود را خود نظر کردم نه دیدم جز خدا درخود عجب من شمش تبریزم که گشت، شیفته بر خود *
[Tr. What a wonderful being am I, Shams of Tabrez: when I came to look into myself, I found none but God in the self.]
In Hinduism also we have it that the Atman (the individual soul) and Paramâtman (God) are the same. Thus all concur in the dictum of the Jaina Siddhinta that the soul is a divinity in 'embryo.' But the question is, how is the potential to be translated into the actual? In other words, how are we to attain to the status of a God? The answer to this is quite simple, and consists in the removal of the causes which debar us from the enjoyment of our natural properties, omniscience, bliss and immortality. For it is but common sense to say that the removal of the cause must lead to the disappearance of the effect. The problem, then, reduces itself to the simple question,